Using our muscles to control things is the way that most of us are accustomed to doing it. We push buttons, pull levers, move joysticks…but what if we could take the buttons, levers and joysticks out of the equation? This is the MyoWare Muscle Sensor Development Kit, an Arduino-powered, electromyography (EMG) sensor kit that provides you with a MyoWare Muscle Sensor, each MyoWare shield developed here at SparkFun, and everything you need to connect them all together.

The MyoWare board included in this kit acts by measuring the filtered and rectified electrical activity of a muscle; outputting 0-Vs Volts depending on the amount of activity in the selected muscle, where Vs signifies the voltage of the power source. It’s very simple to hook up this kit, attach shields to the muscle sensor, stick on a few included electrodes, read the voltage out and flex some muscles!

Also included in this kit is everything you need to set up the MyoWare Muscle Sensor: all associated shields (Power, Cable, LED and Proto), biomedical sensor pads and cable, as well as headers that can be soldered onto each shield so they can be attached together. Make sure to take a look at our MyoWare Muscle Sensor Kit Guide below for tips, tricks and best practices for assembling your MyoWare boards.

To make stacking easier, the MyoWare Muscle Sensor Development Kit includes 3-pin stackable headers. Using these on all of the shields allows for easy stacking in more configurations.

Note: The Power Shield and the LED Shield both provide power, but at slightly different voltages. Don’t use both of these shields at the same time.