Control Anything With Gestures: Myo Bluetooth Protocol Released

First time accepted submitter Legendary Teeth writes The makers of the Myo Gesture Control Armband (Thalmic Labs) have just released the specs for the Bluetooth protocol it uses. While there are already official SDKs for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, this means that now anyone can roll their own support for other platforms like Linux or Arduino without needing to use one of the official platforms as a bridge. Anything you can write code for that that can act as a Bluetooth GATT client would now be possible, really. If you aren't familiar with the Myo armband, it's a Bluetooth Low Energy device with 8 EMG pods and an IMU that you wear on your arm. It can read your muscle activity to detect gestures you make with you hands, which you can then use to do things like fly drones, play games, or control music.

Comments

I think you have to be lucky.

[serviscope_minor]

I think you have to be very lucky with something like this. There is a common trend: everyone wants to be the app store, where you get to be the gatekeeper, either by charging for apps, or providing the unique hardware.

I think the idea is you do basically the minimum work, create an "ecosystem" and then get everyone to do all the hard work for you of developing meaningful applications, without you having to pay a cent (or not many).

It's great when it works: Apple are raking it in as a result. However, the iPhone was already a compelling platform (remember how much smartphones sucked back then?) before the app store. So once the app store was released, there was already a large install base so app writers had an immediate audience.

With something like this is has few uses out of the box. The only initial users are serious enthusiasts and any apps written are going to target fellow enthusiasts. I think it's going to be very hard building up critical mass so you can get into the great position from such a proposition, or you'd have to be very lucky at any rate.

History is already written with app-store wannabes.