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IPFS News Link • Science, Medicine and Technology

Control DIY Projects With Your Mind

• http://www.popsci.com, By Claire Maldarelli

Pressing buttons with your hands is a drag. With OpenBCI, an open-source brain-computer interface, you can use your mind to control smartphones, robots, and even your friends' limbs.

?When DARPA funded research into a brain-computer interface, artist and engineer Joel Murphy and his former student Conor Russomanno built a working prototype. Then they decided to further refine the device in order to make the software and hardware cheap and accessible.

In 2014, the duo launched a successful crowdfunding campaign and eventually developed the Ultracortex, a $399 3D-printed electroencephalogram (EEG) headset, and the Ganglion, a $99 circuit board. The electrodes in the Ultracortex record your body's electrical signals, and the Ganglion transmits the signals to your computer. This allows you to control a mechanical device with your brain waves.

OpenBCI is intended as a DIY device. "We want it to essentially be a Lego kit that you get in the mail, which also just happens to be a brain-computer interface," says Russomanno. It could be used to control mechanical devices or computers with brain waves or facial movement, or simply to watch one's own brain activity.


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