MYO Armband – Control with the Snap of a Finger

I’m a huge fan of Sci-Fi, all the futuristic gizmos and gadgets get me dreaming about what life could be like one day. I’m especially drawn to movies with all that nifty gesture controlled tech stuff. (think Minority Report and Iron Man) I was pretty excited about Microsoft’s Kinect, but it wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned 10 years ago and I’m still waiting to be impressed. My time may have come…  

Check out the MYO Armband, making the science fiction of your dreams a reality, this device is the real deal in gesture driven computer control. The MYO Armband is worn on your forearm and works by picking up electrical activities in your muscles (the ones that work your fingers and wrist) as they make gestures, translating that movement into computer commands.How cool is that?

The most outstanding difference between the MYO Armband and Kinect or Leap motion controller is that instead of waving and jumping around with exaggerated movements in order to be picked up, the MYO Armband can also detect very fine movements, like that of a surgeon, and even the simplest and most subtle finger movement can be read just as easily as a sweeping hand gesture.

Right now, MYO is working as a substitute for existing controllers for some games and devices like Sphero and a remote controlled helicopter drone. It can turn up the volume for you, control some gaming weapons, but thats just the baby steps, developers are looking to release an open source API soon, allowing millions of developers to come up with uses for MYO in conjunction with iPhone and iPad. This technology is going somewhere. Keep an eye on it, and if you want to be part of the fun, you can pre-order your MYO Armband from thalmic.com for under 150 bucks, or at least go check out the video…