Arduino Uno controlling a toy helicopter with your thoughts!

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So you get into mind feedback to learn to control your EEG?

Not everybody that did mind feedback experiments came out so happy.

An bunch of years ago, I built an Alpha waves detector from a Popular Mechanics article. I remember simulating Alpha waves with a Wavetek and it worked good, but I never was able to make it work with my own brain waves!

It seems a little underwhelming to me: all you really get is a single "mental potentiometer" that controls the main rotor speed.

If you just want to experiment with the technology, there are much cheaper toys on the market that have already been hacked to give you a head start on getting access to the EEG data.

Be sure to do some research before buying: I came across one website by someone who'd been playing with multiple devices, and discovered that at least one of them (the Star Wars one, I think) outputs less of the EEG data on its internal serial interface than others do.

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Science-Force-Trainer/dp/B001UZHASY

Used to be 200 bucks (at least 100).

It's all just rubbish. If it worked amputees would be controlling artificial limbs, which they are not. Even with real sensors this sort of thing is neigh on impossible. With Micky mouse sensors it is all one big joke.

This isn't the site I saw last night (sorry, I didn't bookmark it), but it confirms that the Star Wars toy is the one sending fewer values.

Grumpy_Mike:
It's all just rubbish. If it worked amputees would be controlling artificial limbs, which they are not. Even with real sensors this sort of thing is neigh on impossible. With Micky mouse sensors it is all one big joke.

We are not exploring the final frontier with star trek enterprise yet but we ARE using tablets already. Given the fact human motor control is electric in nature, this will eventually be worked out. I agree with you mostly but maybe not all of these is rubbish. Maybe there are genuine researchers that do believe this can be done in the near future.

Maybe there are genuine researchers that do believe this can be done in the near future.

Yes there are, there is no doubt about this. But a lot of this "just do it with a few op-amps" sort of thing is rubbish.

There is something to controlled nuclear fusion as well, evidenced by the sun and stars. That doesn't mean that some toy company will be selling fusion reactors any time soon.

You can already control robot arms with your mind.

As far as i know this uses a brain implant. You could not do it with a start wars force trainer. But i'd say you could do it with a 64/32 channel EEG set up right. I looked it to it once and the were about six grand form the Czech Republic (they have been into this stuff for years) and you had to be a doctor to use it. That was in the 90's so i'd guess it's a bit cheaper and simpler now but not much. I think a lot of work must go into the training of neural networks or the like.