OpenBrainLab

OpenBrainLab

An EEG and biosensors workshop at Hack Manhattan.

Schedule: To be decided. Starting in mid/late Dec. This workshop is made possible by a generous donation from NeuroSky, Inc..

Organizer: Daniel Packer

Overview

This 10 week workshop will cover the workings of biosensor circuits with an emphasis on EEG and the NeuroSky EEG headset hardware. The workshop will have two EEG headsets available and support from NeuroSky for technical questions. During the course of the workshop, we'll acquire and build other kits or circuits to make proofs of concept for various applications. Each student will choose a personal project before the halfway point of the workshop (something realistic) and complete and document that project (as time permits) towards the end of the workshop.

Each week will include a presentation (schedule TBD) and hands-on work on the topic planned. After, participants can stay and continue to work on their projects as long as a member is available to lock up the space afterward.

All documentation and code will be published and shared at the end of the workshop to help others create applications and learn biosignals.

Topics

Analog signals

• high/low pass filters
• op amps
• instrumentation amps
• signal isolation
• safety issues

Human biosignals

• EMG
• ECG
• EEG
• GSR
• EOG

Neurosky hardware applications

• Feedback for NeuroSky
• Hardware
  • Mindset - we have one mindset headset
  • Mindwave - we have one mindwave headset
• More EEG theory
• NeuroSky developer tools
  • See: Developer portal
• Case studies
• Links
  • http://frontiernerds.com/brain-hack
  • http://hex-machina.com/sw/mindbullets/MindBullets1_0.pde
  • http://hex-machina.com/sw/mindbullets/
  • http://hex-machina.com/hw/stampede_autofire
  • http://kbcarte.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/more-fun-with-mindflex/
  • http://hackaday.com/2010/03/04/using-mindflex-to-shock-the-heck-out-of-people/
  • http://danbertner.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/mindwave-hack-with-arduino/
  • http://developer.neurosky.com/docs/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=mindwave_arduino_and_leds.pdf

Personal projects

• Obscurite - mind-mapping urban landscapes
  • Use EEG for brain-aware geospatial/location based services

Generate useful compendium of knowledge/braindump

12/1 EEG headset worked well for some people, not others (dry skin?)

12/6 Comms with Steve at Puzzlebox suggested that Synapse could be best run from source in Ubuntu. Upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 as it has native Python2.7, and installed Python modules as shown [1]

To Use headset:

• Login to a Xubuntu session
• Turn on headset power, blue light should blink then steady when connected via bluetooth.
• Run Puzzlebox Synapse
• Choose Mindset from the pulldown menu, and select the mac address. Press Connect button, then Start the server daemon.

12/20 Guan and Dave worked on using Brain Grapher (written in Processing) to grab data from the Thinkgear Socket provided by Puzzlebox Synapse. Synapse/Server.py and Braingrapher.pde patched to skip raw data packets and correctly process incoming EEG power and eSense packets. 'enableRawOutput' flag sent by either package has no effect on our headsets (only works with MindSet Pro).

If connection quality is consistently poor, try moistening your forehead and left ear with Purell sanitizer.

of interest:

• Brain Grapher [2]

Three seconds of raw output SampleMindSetEEG from the Mindset headset.

OpenViBE - software for EEG analysis : http://openvibe.inria.fr/

• has a MindSet driver, but only for Windows.

Andreas Klostermann has written a very concise set of Python scripts to read and display data from the Mindwave without a Thinkgear emulator layer in Ubuntu - https://github.com/akloster/python-mindwave

• to connect (if red light), run sdl_viewer.py and press F5 when prompted.

2/10/2012 Modified Klostermann's code to use Bluetooth serial stream from MindSet headset instead of Mindwave. See https://github.com/danielpacker/HackManhattan-OpenBrainLab.

• Pair the headset and connect to the 'Headset Service' only.
• No other Thinkgear connector software is required, only Python and dependencies.

Schedule

TBD

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