Magic in a Box: My First Day Using Myo

I have a Myo as well, and it's pretty disappointing. The gestures are so rarely recognized correctly for me (maybe 20% of the time for the fist, pinky to thumb and open palm) that it's always easier to do the action another way. Other people have much better luck, so it may just be limitations in their training data (also, there's no way to train the classifier for your particular body, so you're currently stuck with averages).

But the real disappointment is that there's no access in the SDK to the raw EMG data. This means that as a developer, you only have access to the (in my case useless) gestures and the accelerometer data, which can be captured by much smaller and cheaper devices.

I'm hoping that Myo will open up their data sources, or at least improve gesture recognition. Right now it's pretty useless as a developer device.

What is this trend of writing a lot of words about a new product without ever saying what it is? Am I supposed to already know all the strange, early brands that just released a developer kit? At least this article is linking to the Myo web page at the beginning (that means a context-switch, maybe I'll not even bother returning), and the Myo page actually says what it does (many presentation pages just have a catchy phrase like "it changes everything" without bothering to tell what it is).

I never heard of a Myo before this article. However, I am extremely intrigued! The idea of magically waving my hand and doing actions is awesome. What if I can make a fist to take a picture, or touch my pinky with my thumb to answer a phone call?

Is there any chance there's some "killer app" that finds a special use case that dramatically unlocks some potential in people to get stuff done faster, or easier, with a Myo? Can anyone think of one?

I'm surprised the Myo doesn't have default actions for various finger flicks or wags. If I could flick to scroll up and down pages or zoom in/out, then make a fist to close, that would be incredibly useful for something like using a TV.

Edit: Another really cool thing would be if you could put it on your thigh and use toe movements as input. Four myos for four discrete types of control!

Edit 2: How about something around the neck? It could be a huge step in enabling people with certain types of disabilities to control things more precisely.

I never heard of this until just now and this is my good friend that wrote the post.

It reminds me of Halo from the show Continuum. The early alpha version before it gets deeply integrated into your physical being.

Fast-forward 10 years and we'll be wearing these things, only they'll be called iBod and it will be a combination iWatch and iGlasses and freakishly integrated in our lives.

Ready Player One!

We got to play around with these at CalHacks last weekend, the winning hack was actually a Myo controlled drone, if I recall correctly. Really cool stuff!

I only skimmed it but did he ever say what he was using it for? It seemed to focus more on how it feels to wear than the utility.

What's this even about? And calling it “magic” only raises anticipations of hot air painted pink. Medium looks more & more like a collection of useless marketing fluff.