muscleBAN is a wireless single-channel Electromyography (EMG) wearable ideal for measuring short-term EMG signals and motion data. Find below everything you need to know about your muscleBAN and how to record your signals.
Your muscleBAN Kit
Your muscleBAN kit comes with the following equipment:
- 1x muscleBAN wearable
- 1x packs of electrodes (50 units per pack)
- 1x micro-USB charging cable
- 1x Bluetooth dongle
The muscleBAN wearable comes with an integrated single-channel EMG, triaxial Accelerometer, and triaxial Magnetometer. In addition, the peripheries highlighted below provide you feedback about the device state and more.
Technical Highlights
- Internal Sensors: 1x single-channel EMG, 1x Triaxial Accelerometer, 1x Triaxial Magnetometer
- Sampling Rate: up to 1000Hz per channel
- Sampling Resolution: 16-bit per channel
You can find further information in the muscleBAN datasheet.
Turning the device on and off
You can turn the device on and off by sliding the power to ‘O’ (off) or ‘I’ (on).
Charging your device
Turn your device off and connect the micro-USB to the muscleBAN. Connect the other end of the micro-USB cable to a USB charging port.
During the charging process, the charging LED (at the bottom right of the device next to the battery icon) will light up in different colors depending on the device state:
- Purple: Device is turned off and charging
- Green: Device is turned off and charging has completed
- Red: Devie is turned on, no charging possible
Status LED
The status LED ℹ found at the bottom left of the device provides you visual feedback of the device status:
- Green blinking once a second: Device is in idle mode
- Green blinking twice a second: Device is in acquisition mode
- Red blinking once a second: Device is in idle mode & low battery
- Red blinking twice a second: Device is in acquisition mode & low battery
The Battery LED provides additional visual information during the charging process as described in the previous step.
Step 1: Preparing your muscleBAN for acquisition
Turn the device on.
Step 2: Placing your muscleBAN
muscleBAN is designed for single-channel EMG acquisitions in most of the bigger muscles of your body. The following examples shows one of the many options on how to place EMG electrodes but you can find further help in the following support article.
Related Article
Where should I place my Electromyography (EMG) electrodes?
Prepare the skin for electrode placement by cleaning the skin surface and use rubbing alcohol to remove any excess oil, lotion, dead skin cells to ensure good skin surface conditions for EMG acquisitions. Should you experience issues with the electrodes adhering to the skin surface, we recommend considering shaving the electrode placement to improve the contact.
Take 2 electrodes, and connect them to the stud connects on the backside of your muscleBAN device. Once done, find the correct positioning of your muscle and place the sensor.
💡 Helpful Tips
Generally, the straightforward approach to find the best positioning is to place the muscleBAN along the center of the muscle with the electrodes being placed along the muscle fibres.
You can find below an example on how to place the muscleBAN on the biceps.
Step 2: Connect & setup your muscleBAN in OpenSignals
First, pair your muscleBAN with your computer using your operating system’s Bluetooth manager (you can learn how to do this in this article).
Start OpenSignals and enter there device manger.
OpenSignals will look for available devices and list your muscleBAN once found. Click on the muscleBAN logo to set-up your device.
The muscleBAN’s sensor channels are configured by default due to the internal EMG, Accelerometer, and magnetometer. You can change the following settings:
- Activate sensor channels by clicking on the circle next to each sensor channel (active channels turn blue)
- Sampling Resolution per channel(8-bit or 16-bit)
- Sampling Rate per channel (50Hz up to 1.000Hz)
- Enable / Disable your device for acquisition (ENABLED button must be blue for acquisition)
Step 3: Acquiring signals
Start a signal acquisition by clicking on the red record icon in OpenSignals’ main interface.
The acquisition mode will visualize the recorded signals as shown in the example below.
In the acquisition mode, you can find information about the current acquisition, access the OpenSignals add-ons (for example the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) Analysis add-on) or exit the acquisition.
Step 4: Visualizing recorded signals
Enter the visualization mode by clicking on the play button in OpenSignals’ main interface.
OpenSignals will automatically load the last recorded file and visualize the signal in the visualization mode.
Similar as in the acquisition mode, you can find information about the current acquisition, access the OpenSignals add-ons (for example the Electromyography (EMG) Analysis add-on), load other acquisitions or simply exit the visualization mode.
