Dear OpenBCI Community,

Happy October!We have some great news to share with you this month. We are in the process of updating our guides, we received an award and a certification, and our team has been attending events and interacting with the OpenBCI community all over the place!

In this month’s Newsletter:

We are updating our guides and we want your help!
Community Project of the Month. You could be next!
Research with OpenBCI
General Survey Link
OpenBCI is Open Source Hardware Certified!
OpenBCI is on the 2017 Transformative Technology 200 List
Recent Events
1. 2017 Open Hardware Summit
2. IEEE SMC Annual Meeting & Brain Hackathon

1. We are updating our guides and we want your help!

We are making big changes to our guides and we want your help to make them best suit your needs! Which is why we are asking for your feedback! If you find anything at all confusing on our guides or if you feel like there is a new guide that would help you out on your OpenBCI work, please open an issue on our GitHub page. We recently brought on a new intern, Rebecca from Columbia University (congrats, Rebecca!). Rebecca will be looking into all of the issues and improving our guides! We are constantly working to make your OpenBCI experience a better one! 🙂

2. Community Member 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 have decided to feature our favorite recent community project in every newsletter. If you are interested in being featured or know someone who has a cool OpenBCI project that they might want to share, please fill out this interest form.

This month we want to share the Nerva Headset built by Polle van Duuren!

As product designer, Polle wanted to set out a near-future vision on how neurotech applications can reach consumers. He proposed a new multifunctional neurotech solution that can bridge the gap between the forefront of this movement (OpenBCI people, researchers, etc) and people at home.

How Polle sees this in practice is that a new and consumer-friendly headgear design could replace the more prototyping-oriented UltraCortex. In a balancing act between functionality, ergonomics/precision and user-friendliness, Polle designed the Nerva headgear concept.

Below is a video overview of his design:

Nerva is a modular frame for neurotech applications.

The Nerva headgear is a re-configurable frame that can be set up with different technologies, facilitate various set-ups and allow for most head shapes. With the user-friendly design, it sets to create a tailored experience and future-proof investment for consumers who want to explore their brains in various ways.

Polle made a prototype of the design to evaluate various aspects of its functionality. Though this design is not perfect yet, it can successfully read out his own and his housemates brain signals when set up the OpenBCI! Super exciting! OpenBCI provided a lot of inspiration (the OpenBCI+UltraCortex combo that is), and it served as tool to test the basic working principles of the prototype.

To read more about Polle’s project make sure to check out his website and his community post!

3. Research with OpenBCI

We wanted to add another section to our newsletter celebrating the scientists that use OpenBCI to publish research work! From now on we will share a few articles written by people around the world using OpenBCI for academic research and that we think deserve an OpenBCI cool badge! We are really excited to share their work with you and we hope it inspires you to get your hands on some of our tech and do experiments of your own.

Title: Assistive Technology Design and Preliminary Testing of a Robot Platform Based on Movement Intention using Low-Cost Brain Computer Interface

Authors: Isao Sakamaki, Camilo Ernesto Perafan del Campo, Sandra A. Wiebe, Mahdi Tavakoli, Kim Adams

Abstract:
The process through which children learn about the world and develop perceptual, cognitive and motor skills relies heavily on object exploration in their physical world. New types of assistive technology that enable children with impairments to interact… (READ MORE)

Why it gets the OpenBCI cool badge?: The use of BCI technology to improve the quality of life of people with disabilities is a growing and exciting field. This paper highlights the interesting possibilities to harness the power of BCI and create accessible technology for children in need!

Title: Low cost Brain Computer Interface system for AR.Drone Control

Author: Rafael Mendes Duarte

Abstract:
This work presents the design, implementation, and testing of a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) system based on µ-waves to control the navigation of a drone. BCI systems perform the translation of brain signals into commands to communicate with… (READ MORE)

Why it gets the OpenBCI cool badge?: What is more cool than controlling a drone with your brain? Not much in our opinion. We also wanted to give a shout out to our Brazilian users who have been purchasing a lot of our tech lately, we are excited to see what they make with it!

4. Community 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

Your feedback is extremely valuable to us! Your answers will be anonymous and we will post the answers to selected questions in our future newsletters.

5. OpenBCI is Open Source Hardware Certified!

We are very excited to announce that OpenBCI is now officially Certified as Open Source Hardware by the Open Source Hardware Association! To learn more about the open source hardware and the certification process, check out the definition and requirements for certification page on the OSHWA website.

6. OpenBCI made the 2017 TransTech 200!

The TransTech 200 is the annual list of the key innovators who are driving technology for mental and emotional wellbeing forward. The list is open to both individuals and organizations who are making significant contributions via Transformative Technology research, creation, and/or distribution. It includes a range of honorees, from well-established individuals and organizations who have been active in the space for many years and continue to innovate and push it forward, to those who are in the process of bringing new advancements forward that will change the world in the months and years to come.

We are really excited to be included in this list once again! You can check the full list here.

7. Recent Events

2017 Open Hardware Summit

OpenBCI proudly sponsored the Open Source Hardware Association’s 2017 annual Open Source Hardware Summit, which took place on October 5th in Denver, Colorado. Joel attended as an Open Hardware Association board member and was able to tour Sparkfun and Aleph Objects (makers of the LulzBot 3D printers) during his visit to Denver!

The First Three Lulzbot 3D Printers (at the Lulzbot HQ in Colorado)

IEEE SMC Annual Meeting & IEEE Brain Hackathon

Conor and AJ Keller recently went to Banff, Canada, on behalf of OpenBCI, to attend the IEEE SMC Annual Meeting and simultaneous IEEE Brain Hackathon. OpenBCI proudly sponsored the hackathon event and SMC conference as Gold Donors. The winning OpenBCI team of the the Brain Hackathon designed and prototyped an SSVEP-based home interactive smart wheelchair system, in just over 24 hours. Incredible! For their awesome work, they took home a $1000 OpenBCI Prize!

Conor and AJ saw some familiar faces while there: Tim Mullen from Intheon, Cristoph Guger from g.Tec, Paul Sajda from Columbia University, and Alex Castillo. They also met some new friends! The OpenBCI community continues to grow. : ) To see more photos from the event, check out this recent community post!

Photos from the 2017 IEEE SMC Brain Hackathon in Banff, Canada

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