A year after we got our first taste of the Myo, Thalmic Labs has announced that it will be reaching out to the masses by way of Amazon this quarter. Similar to its pre-order available on the website of the company, this muscle-sensing hand-held device will retail for $199. But before that, Thalmic Labs has already sold the pre-orders of 50,000 (with approximately half shipped to buyers so far) and that's a nice nod of approval to some of the use cases that were shown off by Thalmic Labs and its several partners.
Gallery: Thalmic Labs' Myo armband at CES 2015. 5 Photos
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For those who aren't familiar with the Myo, it consists of eight muscle-sensing modules that you strap onto the broadest portion of your forearm, which allows the device to detect your hand gestures. These gestures include stretching your hands, squeezing and moving your hands left or right, rotating your forearm and even a quick pinch with another finger (which can be used to turn on or pause your Myo). Additionally, there's the combination of a gyroscope, an accelerometer and a magnetometer to track your arm's movement.
The Myo has no power button. It starts to wake up the moment when you touch it and automatically goes to sleep if it is left alone. If used continuously the battery should last between 10 to 14 hours. This is quite impressive.
Bluetooth LE is used to communicate with the Myo Connect application. This app transmits motion data back to the device or program that you are controlling. Thalmic Labs demo room featured the Myo to control video playback, volume, and race the sun, a thrilling game that focuses on flight-based obstacle avoidance and an Orbotix Ollie rolling robot. Save for the connectivity issue with the Ollie and the difficulty of the game, most of these scenarios were quite straightforward for us.
We've previously seen Myo demos involving PowerPoint, iTunes, Call Of Duty, Parrot AR.Drone and a variety of smart glasses. Users will be able to download apps "connectors" from the Myo Market to try out some of these applications and also to control Spotify, Netflix, Sonos plus popular games like Minecraft and Saints Row IV.
Thalmic Labs had impressive displays right before CES. In November, the company launched TedCas' Myo integration, which allows surgeons to manipulate medical images without touching a monitor or a pointing device. The following month, Haute Technique shared its story on how it let Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren wear the armband to control the stage lighting during his performances.Minecraft games With major companies betting on gesture control this year, it will be interesting to see if the people behind the cameras for gesture control can cook up something just as impressive.
Update: The product page on Amazon is now up and running.
