Greetings from OpenBCI!

Happy May everyone! As it is now officially Spring, we hope you start going outside to measure your brainwaves! This month we have been focusing heavily on improving the OpenBCI experience. We have been working with BioEra to provide Ganglion compatibility with their software. We have also finished a beta version of the WiFi Shield and it has been sent out to a small batch of beta testers. Read more below!In this month’s Newsletter:

Normal Shipping Resumed
BioEra & Ganglion
WiFi Shield Updates
Open Lucidity
Community Projects of the Month
Ganglion Over the Air Programming Tutorial
General Survey Link
Past Events

1. Normal Shipping Resumed

As you might know, we were in the process of changing fulfillment centers. This process took us a bit longer than expected, but we have now resumed normal shipping! So now it is a great time to head to the OpenBCI Store and get some of our gear!

We apologize for any orders that had any problems due to the mistakes of our previous fulfillment center (specially international orders). We are now working to ensure that all of our customers get their tech. If you have any questions about a missing or delayed order please email us at [email protected] with your order number.

2. BioEra & Ganglion

We are excited to announce that the OpenBCI Ganglion now has driver support in BioEra! Thanks to the great work by Jarek Foltynski for making this happen! Now you can connect the Ganglion to your computer and create visualizations, games, audio experiences, and more with the intuitive and easy to use BioEra design interface. There are hundreds of design elements, or Objects, to build with and share. Here is a shot of the BioEra Ganglion Example Design to build upon.

3. WiFi Shield Update

We are super excited to announce our partnership with Push The World to create a WiFi Shield for the OpenBCI Cyton and Ganglion boards! The goal of this project is to add WiFi connectivity, control, and data transmission. With the increased bandwidth of WiFi, we will be able to sample at higher rates, and increase the maximum OpenBCI electrode count from 16 to 24! We now have a beta version and we have shipped a samples to a select group of community members to test them out and provide feedback! We are hoping to release the WiFi Shield for sale later this year. You can read more about it here.

4. Open Lucidity: development of a reliable lucid dream induction method – by Peter and Joachim

Have you ever been able to control your dreams? This phenomenon is called lucid dreaming – the ability to know you are dreaming and to alter your dream scenario at will. Currently, there is no scientifically proven way to induce lucid dreams reliably and these two psychologists from Germany want to change that. They want to use the OpenBCI R&D Kit and a self-designed headset with dry-electrodes to measure the brain activity and other physiological markers of dreamers while performing different lucid dream induction techniques. From this, they want to combine the most successful aspects into a new lucid dream induction technique based on objective data. To reach their goal, they have started a crowdfunding campaign on www.experiment.com/openlucidity and have already received over 50% of their target. Now they need your help to get the other 50%. There are 3 days left in the campaign. Help Peter and Joachim reach their goal!

5. Community Projects of the Month

The thing we love most about OpenBCI is our amazingly diverse and inspiring community of hackers, neuroscientists, makers, and more! To celebrate you, we feature one or two community projects here each month. If you are interested in being featured, or know someone who has an interesting OpenBCI project, please fill out this interest form.

This month, we’re excited to introduce the work of the Health for America at MedStar Health (HFA) 2016-17 fellows.

At the beginning of their 10.5-month health innovation fellowship, these recent grads were challenged to create an innovative solution to improve stroke care at MedStar Health, the largest healthcare system in the Maryland and D.C. region. Now, just months away from completing their fellowship, HFA fellows Stephanie Guang and Michael Mezher are conducting a clinical study to test designs for KnightCap, an intelligent sleep mask which uses the OpenBCI Cyton Board to continuously track and analyze brain signals that may indicate a possible stroke during sleep. In the case of a possible stroke, KnightCap will create a timestamp to identify time of onset and emit an alarm to wake the user and give him/her the opportunity to check for stroke symptoms and alert emergency services within the 4-to-6-hour treatment window.

Click here to read more about how the HFA fellows have collaborated with with patients and clinicians at MedStar Health (as well as our community of OpenBCI makers!) to design and build this potentially life-saving technology.

“WAVR- BRAINWAVE MEETS VR” built by Sean Kim and Baris Siniksaran from NYU.

WAVR is a neuro-controlled VR technology that uses the electrical activity of the brain to send commands to a VR application. WAVR also uses a VR application to send commands to a microcontroller by changing the frequency of the alpha brain waves.

“Ganglion Review: Input Noise and P300” by Alexandre Barachant

Alexandre did a comprehensive review of the Ganglion and its capabilities. He also compared the Ganglion to other similar amplifiers! Read more about it on his blog.

RIT DadCo 2017 – By Dan Berg, Tre DiPassio, Colin Fausnaught (OpenBCI 2016 Intern), and John Grosh

DadCo wants to improve the accessibility market by creating cheap and useful EMG-integrated consumer products, and revolutionize both the wearable technology and bionic-prosthetic marketplace!

Helping people is the primary goal of DadCo, and to reach that goal they will be reaching out to prosthetic companies like OpenBionics. DadCo’s more consumer-based goals include wearable technology that can revolutionize the way consumers interact with their smart devices by creating a way to receive and interpret gestures, including but not limited to Virtual and Augmented Reality.

Learn more about them and support their campaign here!

6. Ganglion Over the Air Programming Tutorial

A lot of people have been eagerly awaiting for the OTA programming tutorial of the Ganglion! Well it is now live and you can find it on our tutorials page.

The first Ganglions that were shipped out have firmware that will not allow for OTA programming. The problem came from using a ‘virtual EEPROM’ in the code. If you ordered your Ganglion before 2/27/17 you will need to go through the process of Programming the Ganglion using hardware before you can program OTA. After doing this once, you will not need to do it again!.

7. OpenBCI Survey

We hope that your experience with OpenBCI has been awesome! We are constantly trying to improve the OpenBCI platform. For this reason, we ask that you give us 5 minutes of your time, and complete our latest survey.

OpenBCI Community Survey

8. Past Events

Health Technology Startup Showcase & Networking

On March 31st, the Columbia University Medical Informatics Society hosted seven Health IT startups & organizations from around NYC. OpenBCI was there to talk about innovation on the biosensing industry.

Gathering of Open Science Hardware (GOSH)In March, Joel attended GOSH in Santiago Chile. While there he led a workshop on mixed signal circuit design and met with Rodrigo Quevedo S, the director of the Laboratory of Robotics and New Technologies and President of the Chilean Robotics Association.

SuperHuman Summit – “Dawn of the Neurorevolution”

Additionally, Conor’s talk from the SuperHuman Summit titled “Dawn of the Neurorevolution” was released.

Thank You!

From everyone at OpenBCI, we want to say thank you. Your support is making the open-source Neurorevolution possible. We look forward to getting the latest OpenBCI technology into your hands. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out: [email protected].

Kind regards,

The OpenBCI Team