A few weeks ago I was watching the ‘Best if the Gadget Show’ and one of the task they showed was how they controlled a gantry crane with nothing but the power of their minds.
This was in my mind something straight out of the Sci-Fi shows I watched (and still do) as a kid.
This coincided with me trying to find some cool kit for the volunteers coming to dev4good (www.dev4good.net), we had the Kinect, we had the MS Surface, mind control was definitely on the cards.
Two days ago my Neruosky Mindwave arrived, queue the Star Trek theme tune.
Out of the box
Un Boxing the toy was easy, getting the sticker off their USB dongle was tricky. Unboxed there is not much to the system.
A weird headset similar to the one used in universal soldier (maybe there is a hint of irony here) and the aforementioned USB dongle.
That it I thought, this is all I need to control the world?
I did need a single AAA battery though.
There was also a CD, installing this gave me the option to install the latest software which was 400mb…
The headset is fairly lightweight and feels fairly solid, although not sure about letting the kids use (as the pictures on the box show).
When its on your head, it feels a little odd at first, its not something I would wear in public, at least until I can get my Jedi mind tricks working to make people forget they saw it.
I am guessing the positioning of the main contact and the forehead pad is important, but it does feel weird.
Install
Simple, just agree to the Licence and its off, took about a minute and half to extract.
Plug in the dongle when told, 30 secs later and MindWave manager opens and asks you to add put a fresh battery into the headset.
Once on it auto searches and pairs itself to the headset and tells you the serial number.
Up and running
Once installed the ‘App Central’ application kicks off
and the mindset becomes active.
Using mind control in the real world
Okay its all a little more grey than I thought, there is a great set of free apps/games installed by default. But while playing them you never really know if its you actually doing anything. This I think because you are not interacting with things in the same way.
When I type on a keyboard, I can feel what is happening, I am thinking a millions times faster than my fingers can type – but I know that its me that is doing it.
Sounds strange, but the mindset reads you brainwave and there are you you use for most of the games
- Alpha waves for relaxation
- Beta waves for focus.
But as I don't know how to control them, its a ll a bit hit and miss.
I guess the more you use the hardware and apps the more you understand how your own brain functions.
Now all I need to do is find an application I can use this for!
good place to start for developing against the mindset
- http://developer.neurosky.com/
- http://thinkgearnet.codeplex.com/
more to follow as I start to code my world domination platform up"!
