Planet Arduino

In an effort to help provide paralyzed patients with an easier way to operate their wheelchairs, these makers have developed a system that uses an OpenBCI brainwave cap to collect electroencephalogram (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) signals, literally from a user’s head. Data is then sent to a PC running OpenBCI software and passed along to an Arduino Uno via Bluetooth for control.

The project is outlined in its Instructables post, starting off with four controlling four LEDs and progressing to a simple two-wheel drive vehicle. From there, a rather impressive model of a wheelchair was constructed, and moved in much the same way.

You can see it in action, starting at around 4:30 in the video below.

Using an electroencephalography (EEG) headset and gyroscopic tracking, researchers have created a mind-controlled Tesla Model S.

Self-driving cars seem to be all the rage these days in technology circles, but, as part of Cal Hacks 3.0, researchers have instead figured out how to drive a car using brain waves. This hack takes the form of an EEG headset that translates brain signals into “stop” and “go” commands, with a head-mounted gyroscopic sensor used to tell the steering wheel how to turn.

A radio link using an Arduino transmits these signals to the car’s new physical controls. This takes the form of linear actuators for the brake and accelerator pedal, and a windshield wiper motor for the steering wheel.

As seen in the video below, it works, but looks slightly terrifying! You can find out more about this particular project here.

(Photos: Devpost)

For Connor Russomanno and Joel Murphy, designing a brain-computer interface is not the stuff of science fiction, it is their day job.

Read more on MAKE

The post OpenBCI Launches New, Hackable Brain Computer Interface appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.

[Chip Audette] owns (at least) two gadgets: one of those remote control helium-filled flying shark (an Air Swimmer), and an OpenBCI EEG system that can read brain waves and feed the data to a PC. Given that information, it can hardly surprise you that [Chip] decided to control his flying fish with his brain.

Before you get too excited, you have to (like [Chip]) alter your expectations. While an EEG has a lot of information, your direct thoughts are (probably) not readable. However, certain actions create easily identifiable patterns in the EEG data. In particular, closing your eyes creates a strong 10Hz signal across the back of the head.

To control the fish, [Chip] wired up the stock remote with an Arduino. The problem was that although the remote has five different actions, [Chip] could only easily detect eyes being closed. OpenBCI lets you read different people’s EEGs on different channels, so [Chip] wired up four friends and now it takes five people to completely control the Jaws’ brother.

We’ve talked about OpenBCI before along with a tear down of another EEG device, the Muse headset. We just hope [Chip] is prepared for the obvious “jumping the shark” comments.