Today I got my Myo Alpha in the mail to do some sweet codez. The device is pretty cool; it basically lets you “train” it to know about 6 or so “gestures” (like clenching your fist, or swiping your hand) and then uses an accelerometer and gyroscope to send orientation and acceleration data via bluetooth. It wasn’t too hard to set up either. 

Now, I can’t share any code or anything at the moment because of licencing in the Alpha program. But I’ve been messing with C++ in my old AI / Animation assignment from last year and I managed to get the pitch and yaw to control the camera with my hand:

What I did was, when I did the “fist” gesture, I could move the camera’s pitch and yaw with my arm’s pitch and yaw.

It may not seem like much, but I’ve technically figured out and programmed in methods that can be re-used and implemented into pretty much all of the game’s controls. Fir instance, I can easily use the same code in another game to shoot with the fist gesture, or jump with a flick gesture, all I need to go is use the glass and methods to check which gesture is being used, and the orientation data cane be accessed the same way. You can even easily make it vibrate.

If I had 2 Myos, I could do even more, like move with my left hand and look around with my right.

A future project I’m thinking about is something where I can use my arm to create music and special effects, like a fireworks display, just as a cool demo of the controller.