Upside Down Labs' BioAmp BisCute Is an Ultra-Low-Cost, Easy-to-Build EMG Muscle Sensor Kit
Available in kit form for under $8, or as a KiCad project to make yourself, the BisCute is an affordable entry into EMG projects.
Sensing specialist Upside Down Labs has unveiled a new inexpensive sensor for muscle activity monitoring, the BioAmp BisCute — and it's designed to be easily built using low-cost through-hole components.
"Muscle BioAmp BisCute is an ultra-affordable DIY electromyography (EMG) sensor that allows you to create a human-computer interface (HCI) with ease," explains Upside Down Labs' Deepak Khatri of the board. "In the process of building your own BisCute, you learn what goes into making a functional biopotential amplifier that can be used for amplifying sub-mV signals created by muscles inside your body to a level a microcontroller unit (MCU) can understand."
The new BioAmp BisCute is designed as a cheaper and more easily home-built alternative to Upside Down Labs' BioAmp EMG Pill, unveiled back in February 2021. Like the EMG Pill, the BisCute turns interfaces with wearable electromyograph sensors to turn muscle movements into signals which can be processed by a connected microcontroller — but this time it does so using only simply hand-solderable through-hole components.
"[The] BioAmp BisCute sensor kit is designed for students and hobbyists alike so that they can incorporate EMG sensing in their projects with ease," says Khatri. "Building your own EMG sensor makes you learn the fundamentals of different fields like engineering, physiology, programming, and more. The DIY kit includes both dry as well as wet electrode interface which is a combination you don't see in any hobby EMG sensing kit out there."
The BioAmp BisCute is sold in kit form on the company's Tindie store at just $7.99 — while a functionally-equivalent pre-assembled version, the BioAmp Candy, can be bought for $9.99. For those who'd prefer to truly do it themselves, Upside Down Labs has released the KiCad project files and source code for the BisCute on GitHub under the CERN Open Hardware License Version 2 — Strongly Reciprocal for the hardware and the permissive MIT license for the software.
