Low-end EEG kits exist.[1] Probably easier to start with that.
My favorite toy in this space was Nekomimi in 2012 - cosplay cat ears connected to an EEG sensor.[2] It sensed "resting", "active", and "surprised". I saw some girls wearing these at a convention. Someone called out the name of one of them, and her ears popped up. Only the one, not the others.
It was a good idea, but too bulky. 4 AAA batteries plus huge ears. Someone should do that again, more compactly.
The MindWave Mobile seems far more convenient than a dissected Mindflex. Thanks for sharing the link—I may need to get one myself. Achieving consistent electrode placement was certainly a challenge when I was working on this project.
I hadn't come across the Nekomimi yet but it seems as though Neurosky has figured out how to manufacture relatively inexpensive EEG consumer devices. Further, the Mindwave mobile seems to get 8 hours of run time off a single AAA. I would suspect a more compact implementation of the Nekomimi is quite achievable.
O hey, I have also done this before around 10 years ago. Initially my project was also based on a hacked Mindflex (it was a robot arm). I then reached out to NeuroSky and they just sent me a bunch of their higher tier dev kits for free. No idea if that’s still a thing, but I had really good experiences with them. The signals are a lot more useful.
I always found it funny that people playing Mindflex commonly believed the game was fake[1]. And it would have made sense - why go through the trouble of actually shipping an EEG sensor to children? But they did.
Good times! I also used the Mindflex hack[0] for an artsy piece in 2012. I attached it to an RF module (with a JeeNode[1]) and used the "attention" levels to control the playback speed of my hacky video player (zero attention -> 0.0x speed, full attention -> 2.0x speed). Worked great for the price!
Yes, that was it! I used the same hack in 2012. Fun story: as a prize for winning the science fair with my robot arm, I got to go to Munich to visit ASDEX Upgrade (fusion experiment). I was staying there for a week and just spent each day with a different department.
They have a post-lunch lightning talk thing where interested people gather in a lecture hall with a cup of coffee to listen to a random talk. I was asked to demonstrate my project last-minute but did not have time to ship all the stuff to where I was. I had the headset though (an upgraded NeuroSky model). So I spent the night hacking away at a demo project that just involved kicking a virtual football (soccer) into a goal.
So at some point in 2012 there was a room full of nuclear scientists watching a teenager kick a virtual ball with "their mind". I just find that amusing.
That's awesome! Did you attach the electrodes to the head or somewhere on your arm? I would also be very interested to know how you decoded the electrode data.
On another note, I found it pretty surprising that it's possible to get even remotely accurate data from the Mindflex. As a child, I remember wholeheartedly believing it was real. But, only when I won.
I will also need to shoot NeuroSky a message to see if I can get my hands on one of their dev kits. This recent venture into decoding EEG data was fascinating and I would love to see how far I could take it with non-invasive electrodes.
This is great, thanks for sharing. I think I will give a multichannel headset a try and attempt to train some models that map neural activity to cursor movements.
It sounds as if this individual had some success with the Emotiv INSIGHT (5 Channel) but the data quality was a limiting factor in creating an application usable for everyday activity.
I was in high school and this was for a science fair. It kind of worked, you could more or less reliably move one axis of the arm at a time. I directly used the relax/focus metrics and relied on a training phase where the participant would try to find thoughts/states of mind that would move the needle the most. Very basic stuff (but I didn’t know better at the time).
I am reminded of the meme: Thinking quickly, Dave constructs a homemade [EEG], using only some string, a squirrel, and a[n EEG]. That said, breaking out the functionality from the toy is neat+useful.
This gave me a good laugh! Perhaps a better title would have been "Tearing Apart a Toy to Obtain EEG Data". Regardless, I am glad you found it interesting.
I use the Muse EEG band [1] but with the Mind Monitor third party app and tools [2]. This is another case of an official app being subpar to the hardware device.
Did you have any specific gripes with the Mind Monitor app? The visualizations seem nice, but it would be interesting to see a feature that allows synchronization with other data sources. (e.g. connecting a keyboard to capture both neural activity and keystrokes simultaneously) That said, this might not be worth the effort. For me, obtaining high-quality data was a challenge, which I suspect is a common limitation of non-invasive electrodes.
You can export your data and work with it. Also, there are some online tools and docs [1][2]. Also, there are open source libs such as [3]. My only "gripe" is knowing enough about EEG.
My favorite toy in this space was Nekomimi in 2012 - cosplay cat ears connected to an EEG sensor.[2] It sensed "resting", "active", and "surprised". I saw some girls wearing these at a convention. Someone called out the name of one of them, and her ears popped up. Only the one, not the others.
It was a good idea, but too bulky. 4 AAA batteries plus huge ears. Someone should do that again, more compactly.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/NeuroSky-MindWave-Mobile-Brainwave-St...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurowear