Myusicality | Devpost

Inspiration

After watching the trailer for Myo, we became inspired to develop software for this unique piece of hardware. We saw so much potential in the device, so many possibilities that were merely waiting to be discovered as technology for virtual and augmented realities continued to advance. The inspiration for our project came from orchestra conductors, and how seemlessly they were able to control music by simply waving their baton. With that, the idea of Myusicality was born.

What it does

Myusicality is a piece of software that plays, edits, and visualizes music with the aid of simple arm gestures detected using the Myo armband. By separating a song using FFT into four different frequency ranges, effectively granting control to the user, who can increase and decrease the intensity of each range on demand. Intuitive arm gestures such as waving left and right allows the user to cycle through the four frequency ranges. Double-tapping their thumb and index finger selects the current range, and raising/lowering the arms increases/decreases the intensity of the selection. All of these actions appear on a graphical interface display, providing accurate feedback to the user.

How we built it

Using Myo's SDK (in C++), we were able to gain input from the Myo device, providing us with the user's gesture. We then outputted this information onto a text file which was then read by a Python program (a language that we were more familiar with). Our Python program also took an audio file as input (chosen by the user), which was separated into different frequency ranges with the help of Pyo libraries. Then, using the user's gestures as provided by Myo, the program would be able to cycle through the ranges and change their intensities. Finally, using matplot libraries, we were able to create a GUI to display all the data for the user.

Challenges we ran into

For our team inexperienced in dealing with hardware, It was especially difficult to get the Myo functioning to its full capability. Much of the time we spent, was in fact, trying to learn the API for the various programs we used (Pyo, MatPlotLib, etc.) and experimenting with using various resources. These challenges added to our time constraint, and forced us to work harder and faster to finish our project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For two of the members of the members of our team, it was their first major hackathon experience and that in itself was an accomplishment. We are extremely grateful that we were able to overcome all the difficulties we experienced in making our project, such as figuring out how the APIs worked and debugging countless errors.

What we learned

From MasseyHacks, we learned to work as a team and how to efficiently problem solve. Moreover, we greatly improved our skills in reading and implementation, as well, broadened our knowledge in hardware.