[Noisebridge-discuss] openeeg

[Jacob Appelbaum]

Jonathan Foote wrote:
> Judging by some of this traffic, I think people have misconsceptions
> regarding EEGs and would do well to read up on it a bit. EEGs are not
> a "brain jack." You are not going to control anything reliably, and
> even detecting anything is hard. (Yes, you've seen the monkey move the
> robot arm video. That's not EEG: that measured specific neural regions
> using electrodes inserted through a hole in the skull.)
> 

I'm sure there are some misconceptions about the limitations of EEG
hardware. I'm also pretty sure that people are expressing that they want
brain output of *any* sort. To play with the data that is easily
available and not to build some kind of commercial whiz-bang
application. I personally want to explore and to experiment. I'm not
expecting to control gdb or vim with a headset. I like the idea of the
Emotiv headset because it seems to be industrially designed for many
heads and not just one. It sure seems to beat a flimsy headband too.

> At best, you can measure the energy in the various bands (alpha, beta,
> etc.) with pro EEG gear and (lots of) good electrodes. How and whether
> this correlates with particular mental activities or emotions is still
> an open research question. With practice, you can likely change your
> alpha/beta ratio but it's going to take the better part of a minute if
> you can do it at all.  And noise and muscle movements (e.g. blinking)
> will give you 10x the signal of anything going on in the brain.
> 

That sounds great for the authentication system I'm vaguely interested
in building. It sounds pretty solid for some kinds of music related
interaction too.

> I don't mean to say that this isn't an excellent thing to be
> interested in or to hack on, just that it's much easier to get your
> expectations up than it is to get anything actually working -- see
> Emotiv as an example of hype vs. reality.
> 

I totally see where you're coming from. However, I think there's no need
to be a wet blanket about excitement from the group. We'll all learn how
we're wrong ten ways from Sunday soon enough. That's part of the
excitement of learning and growing while undertaking such a project. :-)

> Art projects using the EEG like Kal's robot or the Monochrom drink
> machine are cool and fun, but they basically use EEG as a glorified
> random noise source. It would be excellent to do something better.

I think those machines are interesting. They're limited but fun.
Specifically they seem like a good quick inspirational step on the way
to something better. I currently cannot serve cocktails with a robot by
thinking about my desired drink. That seems like a fun first project and
a personal shortcoming. I admit though, it could just be that soft spot
in my heart for robots and cocktails. :-)

I think many people (myself included!) interested in EEG stuff probably
don't have a good handle on all of involved concepts. Nor does everyone
have a way to capture the data that needs to be acquired, nor do we all
have the circuits involved in that acquisition and I'm certain that we
haven't all done the programming for processing that data. A simple
project may serve as a good peer learning project where we can cross
pollinate. It's all part of some kind of boot strapping process that
will take us to bigger things. Who knows where and what?

Perhaps as you seem to know lots more than many involved, you can help?

Perhaps give a workshop on the general overview of EEG stuff? I'll show
up and I'm surely not the only one!

Best,
Jake