More and more we want to control things with our mind instead of just pressing buttons or making sound and gestures for something to happen. This project is especially aimed for this sort of applications.
Before we begin explaining the various parts of this projects and the Gizmos made by us for it, we firstly have to explain what EEG actually stands for and how it is used.
Electroencephalography (EEG) is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp produced by the firing of neurons within the brain. In clinical contexts, EEG refers to the recording of the brain's spontaneous electrical activity over a short period of time, usually 20–40 minutes, as recorded from multiple electrodes placed on the scalp. In neurology, the main diagnostic application of EEG is in the case of epilepsy, as epileptic activity can create clear abnormalities on a standard EEG study. A secondary clinical use of EEG is in the diagnosis of coma and encephalopathies. EEG used to be a first-line method for the diagnosis of tumors, stroke and other focal brain disorders, but this use has decreased with the advent of anatomical imaging techniques such as MRI and CT.
Derivatives of the EEG technique include evoked potentials (EP), which involves averaging the EEG activity time-locked to the presentation of a stimulus of some sort (visual, somatosensory, or auditory). Event-related potentials refer to averaged EEG responses that are time-locked to more complex processing of stimuli; this technique is used in cognitive science, cognitive psychology, and psychophysiological research.
A more detailed explanation about EEG can be found in WikiPedia
Although we built the hardware for this application, the actual project has been developed and initiated by a member of our community josheeg. There are several parts which are needed in order to have the complete EEG solution and we have started developing the main ones.
Analog to Digital Converter Gizmo
As the first part of this Gizom Kit we have developed the Analog to Digital converter. This Gizmo is the actual device that converts the Analog signals which come from the human scalp and translates them to high accuracy Digital information. Information that can be processed and analyzed later on through the SPI interface which is available on this Gizmo.
The signals that come out of the Analog to digital converter when processed should look similar to the image below.
As we progress with this project we shall be adding other parts of the EEG kit here as well as a continuation of this description.
