Taking input from a MyoWare muscle sensor with a Raspberry Pi Zero

Question

Our robotics class is making a robotic hand that takes input from muscle sensors. We have a Raspberry Pi Zero and are trying to take muscle activity input from a MyoWare Muscle Sensor. The program we are writing to control the hand and take input from the sensors is written in c++.

What libraries do I need/where can I find code or documentation to do this?

EDIT: We have a hat on the pi that can transfer analog input to the raspberry pi. I am looking for what libraries/code I need to detect input from the sensor.

Answer 1

The MyoWare Muscle Sensor is an analog device and the Raspberry Pi has not Analog to Digital Converter (ADC). You will need to read the sensor from a device with an ADC and transfer this to the Raspberry Pi.

Adafruit has a number of ADCs, the first three that show up would be suitable. In addition, any number of microcontrollers or Arduinos (or similar controllers) that have built-in would do the same job as a dedicated ADC and still be able to communicate to the Raspberry Pi via I2C or SPI.

I prefer the dedicated ADC devices because they tend to be faster and more precise. They are also smaller.

There are also HAT's for the Raspberry Pi that contain ADC's, but I've never had the opportunity to use one.

Happy Making!