So, now that the proof of concept worked, the next step was to make it wearable. After all, I wanted to run with this thing. So, I picked up some Adafruit Lilypads, (pre-flora)

Adafruit Flora

And a whole bunch of sewable electronics, like sewable LED's and thread

Stainless Thin Conductive Thread

Adafruit LED Sequins - Warm White - Pack of 5

And routed the SEMG data through the Lilypad, like this.

I also wasn't fond of the signal strength I was getting through the Advancer board, so I built my own electrode with a basic opamp amplifier configuration directly at the skin contact surface. Which you can see here.

I then added the flora to my shirt, a bicycle jersey.

And here's what it looks like assembled.

And the whole thing.

I stopped at doing both sides because I had only one functioning set of electrodes (I fried two sets, and exchanged some emails with Advancer regarding what I was doing.)

And here's the first test of the idea.

I used to be a kickboxing/martial arts instructor for a number of years, so yeah, Hell yeah, I'm going to do combat motions with this thing!

And here's a test of the concept with some weights.

I then took it out for a walk with my dogs. In my opinion, if the technology you're using can't be put through its paces doing all kinds of weird crap, it's no more useful than a delicate toy.

I ran into a whole bunch of problems that I needed to work out though. For starters, I needed to integrate the unit into one small thing, as I wanted to get the SEMG signal from my other parts of my body as well. I also needed it to be smaller, and more flexible. My sweat also made the conductive thread wonky with the electrical signal, and overall, I wanted a better design. The Advancer Technologies circuit also oversaturated, and I had some issues with the circuitry itself. So, I threw out the entire design, and went back to the drawing board. I wanted to create a better circuit, a better electrode, a better way to change the gain, a better form factor, basically I wanted a much more useable wearable SEMG device.