Feb 17, 2020 21:00:00

A musician who can modify his own prosthesis and control the music just by thinking is too cyber

Myoelectric hand to act as electronic musician and YouTuber of Bertolt Meyer 's, has modified its own artificial arm in 'artificial arm that can control the music just thinking in my head'.

Man hacks his prosthetic arm to control music synthesizer with his thoughts / Boing Boing
https://boingboing.net/2020/02/15/man-hacks-his-prosthetic-arm-t.html

Muscles contract due to weak electrical stimuli issued as commands from the brain, and this potential is called 'surface myoelectric potential' and can be detected on the body surface. It is the 'myoelectric prosthesis' that controls the operation according to the output amount of this surface myoelectric potential. Is reproduced with a prosthetic hand.

Mayer came up with the idea of controlling the synthesizer using this surface EMG, and developed a device called 'SynLimb' to be attached to the myoelectric prosthesis, and introduced it on his YouTube channel.

Hacking my arm prosthesis to output CV so that it plugs into my synth: Thought-controlled music!-YouTube


Meyer's myoelectric hand can rotate the wrist 360 degrees, grasp and release objects. However, it seems that fine operations such as twisting small knobs for controlling the synthesizer are difficult. My idea was to operate the synthesizer using the surface EMG detected by the myoelectric hand.

To control the synthesizer using the surface EMG detected by the myoelectric hand, it is necessary to convert the detected surface EMG to a control voltage that can be understood by the synthesizer. For that purpose, it was necessary to design a circuit board, but Mr. Meyer realized that the signal

kit he wanted was amplified with the field kit of KOMA Elektronik , a music equipment manufacturer at home. He contacted KOMA Elektronik directly. Krisie, who works at KOMA Elektronik, responded immediately and succeeded in providing a circuit diagram to create the equipment required by Meyer.

And with the cooperation of Daniel, the father of Clichy and Meyer, he created a custom circuit board tailored to Meyer's myoelectric hand. The base is output with a 3D printer.

This is completed. It is named 'SynLimb'.

design

Remove the prosthesis ...

Attach SynLimb here. It is easily removable with one hand.

There is an indicator light where Meyer points with his finger, which allows us to determine if SynLimb is running.

By connecting this SynLimb to the synthesizer with a cable, the synthesizer can be controlled by the surface EMG detected by the myoelectric prosthesis. Surface myoelectric potential is an electrical stimulus that occurs when trying to move the arm, and since Meyer is usually used to handling myoelectric prostheses, with SynLimb there is exactly `` controlling the synthesizer just by thinking '' It seems to be possible.

SynLimb and the synthesizer can be connected with two cables, and in the movie we have succeeded in changing the pitch of the reproduced sound source without manually operating the synthesizer.

Since SynLimb is still in the prototype stage, Meyers are still working on development.