Microbit - Myoware Muscle Sensor

This is just a quick guide to show how you can connect a Myoware Muscle sensor to a micro:bit. The Myoware sensor can sense the tension of muscles, which is pretty cool, since it allows you to control your projects with your muscles.

1 x Micro:bit

1 x Motor:bit

1 x Myoware Muscle Sensor

1 x 9 volt battery + battery holder

3 x Jumpwires (Male to female)

3 x Jumpwires (Alligator to alligator)

3 x Disposable Surface Electrode

Some wire (I use some in white, black and red)

Tools:

Soldering tools

Wire cutter

So the first thing you want to do is to solder some wire to the myoware muscle sensor. From now on I shall just call it the muscle sensor.

I soldered

red to + (Voltage)

Black to - (Ground)

White to the last hole

Use the jumper wires to connect:

+ (Red/Voltage) to 5 volt on the motor:bit

- (Black/ground) to gnd on the motor:bit

Data (White wire) to pin 10 on the motor:bit

In theory the myoware sensor should be able to run directly from the micro:bit, but I find that its performance becomes to bad to really be useable.

Also connect the battery holder and battery to the motor:bit.

The programming is rather easy. Remember I am danish, so the lanuage in the prorammer is sadly in danish.

First we go to the Makecode editor and start a new project.

We use AnalogRead on pin 10 where the myoware sensor is connected. The muscle sensor will give us a number betwen 0 and 1023, so we use the "map" block to get a number bewten 0 and 9 instead. We want the number to be a whole number, so we use the "Round off" block. We then show the number by using a "Show number" block in a "Forever" block.

You can also just find the program here.

Put the eletrode pads on a big muscle group and try it out.

The myoware sensor is actuelly really sensitive when you use it with 5 volt and you will get a whole new level of awareness about when you tense or relax your muscles.