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Arduino Assisted Mind-Controlled Television

Posted by timothy on from the just-exercising-my-brain-in-here dept.

andylim writes "Dcept905, aka Paul, has interfaced an EEG headset and an Arduino with an IR LED to control his television set with thought alone. 'I have finally gotten around to re-writing some of my old code and re-recording a proper demo of controlling physical objects using thoughts by interfacing an EEG headset with an Arduino. While this technology is interesting and exciting, before anyone sees this as an endorsement for this particular EEG headset, I strongly recommend reading my full review of the device.'"

13 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. The (d)evolution of humanity? by CRCulver · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In one of his short stories collected in Tales of Known Space , Larry Niven introduced an alien species that had developed the power to attract prey towards it telepathically. Consequently, these aliens no longer had a need to move around to sustain itself, and evolved into a sessile species that just sat there like a rock. At a time when health experts complain that young people are becoming too sedentary, is the potential of mind-controlled technology really that good a thing?

    1. Re:The (d)evolution of humanity? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Perhaps not for an able-bodied person who is using the tech. to be lazy. On the other hand, someone who is paralyzed from the neck down and could control his wheelchair by interfacing this headset to its control circuitry might have a different opinion on the matter.

    2. Re:The (d)evolution of humanity? by ozmanjusri · · Score: 2, Funny
      must...reach... for soda.

      These aren't the sodas you're looking for.
      Move along... move along.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    3. Re:The (d)evolution of humanity? by shentino · · Score: 2, Funny

      To hell with sedentary, I'm more worried about this sort of tech getting into the hands of the thought police.

  2. Interesting to see.. by joocemann · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... that we can now control the TV with our minds after decades of it going the other way.

    1. Re:Interesting to see.. by jrumney · · Score: 2, Funny

      How long before the feedback loop fries his brain?

    2. Re:Interesting to see.. by sam0737 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hey! Why would you ever turn on TV, change channels and volume?
      The TV mind-controls you to control it. Give you the illusion of you are controlling it and everything, but we all know it's a trap!!

  3. Mentat Television by Dachannien · · Score: 3, Funny

    It is by will alone I set my TV in motion.

  4. That's great... by matunos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... for paraplegics, but I think I'll stick with my current thought-controlled interface: hands.

  5. I have a problem with my TV... by harpake · · Score: 5, Funny

    It keeps changing to porn every seven seconds.

  6. Wow... by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 2, Funny

    There goes my last 30 calories of exercise a day...

  7. Get them involved in open source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    This is an amazing story - but it is so rife with issues and lock-downs. vis: "I believe that this technology can be amazing when used in accessibility applications. Wheelchairs, robotic arms, and an array of any product you can imagine controlled by thought are the direction I had hoped to go in, but having to physically strap a laptop and monetarily strap the hardware and license costs on is disgustingly restrictive." It's now time to get Emotive to listen to the fact that they are on the verge of transforming the world. Not giving the open source community the ability to interface with their product is going to result in one of two things:

    a) A Chinese knock-off

    b) Reverse engineering

    Here's what we need to do: email the principals: Professor Allan Snyder, Neil Weste and ask them to please re-consider making their product more open. This would get all sorts of hackers involved and result in significantly increased sales. I really do not understand Emotive's marketing strategy. If you want to own a market, a mix of closed and open source software is the route to go: the Google phone is a great example: mostly open source software with the phone communications stack closed source (for obvious reasons).

  8. Branding is alive and well... by KreAture · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Am I the only one seeing that the Arduino platform is just a set of dev-boards with Atmel AVR chips on them?
    Agreed, it's a nice jumpstart when you need to cobble together a test, but it isn't supposed to be the final step.

    The article should headline "Atmel AVR Assisted Mind-Controlled Television". Then credit Arduino in the text.