MYO - Wearable Gesture Control from Thalmic Labs

Gesture-control device racks up almost $4 million in pre-orders What if you could control your computer, phone, or your favorite tech gadget with a wave of your arm or a snap of your fingers? Watch MYO, the wearable gesture control device from Thalmic Labs, in action. The MYO armband, which uses proprietary muscle activity sensors to detect your hand and arm gestures, uses Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy to wirelessly communicate with the devices it is paired with. The Canada-based startup, which has just 15 employees, created waves at the Y Combinator Demo Day on Mar. 26. It has already racked up over $3.7 million in pre-orders from 129 countries. “MYO is a good commercial implementation of electromyography — a technology that’s already being used in robotics and kinesiology,” said Adib Ghubril, research director at Gartner. Stephen Lake, the 23-year-old chief executive and co-founder of Thalmic Labs, told us, “We’ve been approached by most of the big companies in the Valley,” without giving any names. Photo: Aaron Grant (left), Stephen Lake (right).

The magic of an augmented map Credit: Jessica Clarke JOB:Computer sciences student Location:Hobart, Tasmania Institution:University of Tasmania Augmented reality is a live view of a physical environment with elements that have a computer generated sensory input. The CSIRO are now taking the product to people who might be interested in exploring this augmented reality world themselves. When holding the device with the ‘Magic Map’ app over a map, you can view up to date weather phenomenon from the local sensor networks as a 3D map and data visualisation. “I am fascinated by human-computer interaction, and when designing new systems, I always consider the best way to make a system more user friendly and intuitive,” says Clarke. Clarke discovered first-hand how technology can become intuitive in people’s nature. “He is able to swipe through the apps and pick the app he wants.

From fitness to wellness: OMsignal’s smart shirts measure your motion … and emotion Fitness is good, but wellness is better. And to become one with the universe, you must first become one with your T-shirt. Tracking bracelets like Fibit, Fuelband, and Up are for fitness, measuring steps, motion, and action. Arm straps like BodyMedia also measure heart rate, skin conductivity (how much you’re sweating), and exercise intensity. All of those are important to Montreal-based smart apparel startup OMsignal too, but the company says there’s more to wellness than fitness. “We think movement is awesome, we’ve worn all the devices,” says CEO Stephane Marceau. OMsignal is doing that, as you might have guessed, by making you one with the shirt. OMsignal’s T-shirts and bras have the basic tool that every other fitness solution employs: a 3-axis accelerometer to give you motion and steps and estimated calories. That’s not just heart rate, that’s an actual measurement of the electrical signature of your heart. Those insights have a lot to do with stress. But not just yours.

Internet of Things and Kickstarter. A perfect match? Internet of Things and Crowdfunding Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms are quickly becoming the first stop for Makers and hardware manufacturers to test their product concept on the market, cover bulk upfront supplier costs, and bring their connected products to life. Twine, the sensor block system developed by Supermechanical was the first web enabled product to be a breakout hit raising over half a million dollars in early January, and the Pebble watch blew through Kickstarter's old funding records by raising more than $10 million during its month-long campaign.Below we take a look at some of the successful (and a few not so successful) Internet of Things related projects that are driving this trend and where they currently stand in their development process. // Ongoing Campaigns Unsuccessful in their funding: Will these projects turn into viable companies? Can hardware costs be driven low enough to generate mass market adoption?

Wovyn | Weaving the Internet of Things ... Hackers print tiny Linux box to net up your home High performance access to file storage The Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer designed to get you writing programs. Here's a tiny computer designed to get things done in your home and out of it without writing a single line of code. Called the Ninja Block, it's an open source hardware gadget running Linux that's designed to accept feeds from external sensors - it has some on board too, including a thermometer and an accelerometer - and route the data to the web. Prototype Ninja Block (right) with a motion sensor You use the web-hosted control system, called Ninja Cloud, to set up simple rules to trigger web services and devices connected to a Ninja Block, based on the incoming signals. Inputs can come from the web too - Xbox Live sign ins, files arriving in your Dropbox, incoming Tweets, Facebook mentions - and even from Apple's Siri voice control tech. Each Ninja Block has an Ethernet port for connectivity and a simple LED for feedback. The Beagle Bone board

Enter the Ninja: A startup attempts world domination on “Internet of Things” from Australia By Hamish McKenzie On May 24, 2013 You might have heard of Ninja Blocks . The Sydney-based startup first came to the world’s attention last year with one of the most successful pre- Pebble hardware campaigns on Kickstarter . The Ninja Block, a small device with built-in sensors that allowed users to link the Internet to actions in the physical world , raised more than $100,000 in pledges and shipped out to customers only a couple of months after deadline – almost unheard-of in the world of hardware projects on Kickstarter. The device was nifty, enabling a kind “ If this then that ” for stuff. But Pete Moore saw a bigger opportunity. Essentially, Moore wants Ninja Blocks to do for connected devices what Twilio has done for telephony. To get a sense of how that would work in the connected devices world, consider the humble toilet paper roll. For now, Ninja Blocks is selling connectivity as a service, and has cut some deals with manufacturers to build its tech into their products.

Ninja Block aims to democratise the sensor-rich internet of things [Clockwise from top] In keeping with the open-source theme, 3D-printable case designs are available. The Ninja Block can communicate with wireless sensors via a 433MHz transmitter, while, inside, a BeagleBone open-source computer the size of a credit-card rins Ubuntu. An Arduino-comptable microcontroller allows users to add their own hardware and softwareRowan Fee This article was taken from the June 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online. In September last year, Sydney-based computer engineer Marcus Schappi discovered that a hawk was trying to eat his chickens.

electric imp - what is the imp? The Complete Connectivity Solution The Internet of Things refers to the growing number of devices that are connected to the Internet, enabling them to interact with each other, online services and humans. Electric Imp is at the center of this movement, offering a complete end-to-end solution that makes it simple to connect almost any product to the Internet through an innovative and powerful cloud service tied closely to leading-edge hardware. Now, rather than spending time and resources to design and integrate connectivity, companies and developers can instead focus on their core expertise to build unique and rich experiences into their products, add value and differentiation, and reduce time to market. The Electric Imp connectivity platform, featuring fully integrated hardware, software, OS, APIs, cloud servers, makes it possible to effectively empower your devices with intelligence, scalability and flexibility. The Electric Imp Platform