Hello! So we’ve come to a unanimous decision that we will
try to purchase a premade amplifier/filter if we can find one under $30 at all
costs. In the case that we can’t obtain this, we plan to re-evaluate the
approach we are using and use a sensitive motion sensor to track blinks rather
than look for brainwaves.
I found an integrated chip called the TGAM (it I more than
just an IC, it’s a actually a small pcb) that
- Raw
sampled wave values (128Hz or 512Hz, depending on hardware)
- Signal poor
quality metrics
- eSense
Attention and Meditation meter values
- EEG
band power values for delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma
The chip comes programmed with NeuroSky
eSense, A/D, amplification off head detection, and noise filtering for EMG and
50/60Hz AC powerline interference
The following
sites have more information
All these things, especially the filtering, were things we
failed to get working in out homemade design. It is our hope that this chip
will solve our immediate issues and get us back on track. The output goes out
as uart at 1200, 9600, or 57600 output baud rate, so easy for the Arduino to
handle! The website did not have a list price, only prices for the full
headsets that Neurosky develops. I sent them an ‘inquiry’ but they ignored me;
instead I ordered a toy off of amazon that uses the TGAM chip, this toy is
commonly used for diy bloggers and interfacing it with other things is well
documented on many websites. (The MindFlex Toy)
On another note: did you know EEG actually stands for Electroencephalogram?
I learned this from the neurosky website.
We’re meeting up on Monday (hopefully) to go over our
presentation, we can’t be sure if we’ll have much to show off, but we’re going
to film a short clip explaining our project and then itegrate into videos of
the working machine (like an advertisement) later down the road.
