[summarity]

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.

[1] Example: https://youtu.be/AJjN4se2yyQ

[whilenot-dev]

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!

[0]: https://frontiernerds.com/brain-hack (glad it's still online)

[1]: https://www.digitalsmarties.net/products/jeenode

[summarity]

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.

[gl44snip]

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.

[gl44snip]

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.

[summarity]

I also recommend this video as a resource on low cost EEG from someone who tried living with it: https://youtu.be/c-LyXBCNsrA?si=7xoM1OGTNRbMsO_P (skim through)

That goes over several nicer multichannel options. The NeuroSky stuff will only get you so far :)

[gl44snip]

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.

I came across this article today: https://medium.com/@kevinjycui/of-mice-and-mind-creating-a-s...

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.

[tomcam]

Wait don’t leave us hanging. What were your results?

[summarity]

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).

[tomcam]

Fantastic project IMHO