Prime Minister Harper goes behind the scenes with Thalmic Labs and Myo

It looks like everyone can’t wait for the Myo.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper got a behind-the scenes look at Thalmic Labs’s gesture control armband Myo on Friday. The PM was given a tour of its corporate office and was also treated to a live demo of the Myo armband flying a Parrot drone.

“It was an incredible experience having Prime Minister Harper visit Thalmic Labs on Friday, showing a true interest in the technology that we’re creating. Visits like this solidify the impact that start-ups like ours can have, both on a national and a global scale,” Thalmic Labs told Mobile Syrup.

Earlier that week, Thalmic hosted a 45-minute hangout with co-founders Stephen Lake and Aaron Grant where they fielded questions about the final design, shipping timelines and applications.

From the hangout we learned that the Myo will have a battery life of approximately 2 days, will be sweat- and moisture-resistant, but unfortunately not waterproof, and is currently planned to go out with five stock gestures including fist, wave in, wave out, finger spread and thumb-pinky tap. Thalmic was quick to point that there will likely be more gestures added as its machine learning continues to perfect new algorithms.

Thalmic Labs also revealed in its Q&A with users that it intends to launch an app store for the armband called Myo Market, which will be a place to discover and learn about the product and download applications. The store will house apps created by the 10,000 third-party developers that applied to create software for the armband as well as those created in-house by the Thalmic software team.

We have already seen some incredible apps for the alpha developer program on Thalmic’s YouTube channel. Many of these use the Myo to control connected lighting, change up the music and add new interactions for Oculus Rift.

The Myo Market is expected to open closer to the September shipping date for Myo.