Conor and his Brain Hat and Android App

One of my collaborators on OpenBCI is Conor.  He's done some really cool EEG hacks.  This one is really sweet:

It uses a Neurosky Mindflex, an Arduino, and a Sparkfun bluetooth module.  It monitors his brainwaves, analyzes the energy content in different frequency bands, and sends the data out over Bluetooth to his Android app.  The Android app that he's using (did he write it or use an existing one?) looks like:

With this app he can log the EEG data along with his mood and activity at the time.  Through post-test analysis he can look for correlations.

Overall, this is a sweet project.  I'm looking forward to stealing...I mean, borrowing...I mean stealing his ideas for my own hacks.

Thanks Conor!

Sparkfun EEG Hacker-in-Residence

I just saw this post from Sparkfun regarding their latest "hacker in residence".  Apparently, Sophi is going to be hacking a Neurosky "Mindwave" EEG headset to create a brainwave interface to other hackable electronics.  Cool!  Here's the quote:

Sophi: I’ll be working with Neurosky’s brainwave headset to create a hardware interface that makers, engineers and educators can use to create projects that trigger on brainwaves. I am very curious about the brainwave headset (it’s called a Mindwave). The Mindwave uses one electrode to measure attention, concentration and eye blinks. I want to see if anything usable can be registered from one sensor intended to get a signal from an object (the brain), that sits inside of a bunch of fluid and then has a skull and hair and skin on top of it.

A couple of years ago I got to ride The Ascent, which uses the Mindwave headset to control the ride. The Rider is strapped into a harness, which is connected to a computer-controlled winch. As the Rider concentrates while wearing the Mindwave, the winch pulls the Rider as high as 30' up towards the ceiling. It was an incredible experience!

I’d like to explore the different applications for this technology, such as using an eye blink to fast-forward your music while running, or wagging a fake tail at ComicCon. Do you have an idea for an application? Put it in the comments!

My favorite part is that this is exactly the kind of stuff that we're looking to enable with our OpenBCI device. I'm always happy when I find folks out there like me who are into brainwaves and into mind-control over their hacks.  Good luck Sophi!