Have you always wanted to monitor your brains signals, but didn’t have the money or expertise for an expensive setup? I caught up yesterday with Jacob Shiach about the Arduino EEG Project, which I first heard at the Open Science Summit in Berkeley, CA back in July. Here’s what Jacob had to say:
From an outside view, it probably looks like a torture scene from a Bond flick. Forrest is sitting there with electric wires tied to metal washers duct-taped to the side of his head. While I adjust the power on a foreboding box that appears to cause Forrest’s face to distort in pain. Luckily this isn’t the movies, the strange box is called an Encephalagraph (EEG) and the faces are just a side effect of trying to force different brainwaves to present.
Using only an Arduino, a few resistors, capacitor, op amps, washers, a 9v battery, and duct tape, you can read brain waves. It’s surprisingly that simple. We held an “art” workshop on the 25th, teaching people how to build EEGs and how to integrate them it into their artwork. High school students who had never soldered before were able to understand the electronics behind it and how they work to relay brain waves. It was really pretty amazing.
Note: Our EEG serves double purpose as an EKG which is what we were testing in this video
You can check out more info about the Arduino EEG on Jacob’s Kickstarter page
If you have a cool science project, want to test if your food is genetically modified, or learn more about your DNA, comment on this post!
Bio: Tito Jankowski is of course a fan of open source science tools, including his own work on gel electrophoresis and easy to use PCR.
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