MAKE Magazine: Comments about Articles

Brain Machine making workshop in Philly

For folks in the Philly region, I'll be giving a Brain Machine making workshop at The Hacktory, a new hacker space in Philadelphia. The workshop is on Saturday, May 10th, from 10am to 5pm. http://thehacktory.org/classes/brain-machine-workshop Mitch.

OCR1A

Hi Always Tired, OCR1A is the Output Compare Register for Timer1. It can do a bunch of things, but the way the firmware sets things up for this project, when Timer1 counts up to the value in OCR1A, the Timer1 output pin toggles (i.e., goes high if it was low, or goes low if it was high), thus generating a square-wave output on that pin. We use it to generate audio, at the frequencies that we want. The details are described in the firmware documentation I wrote up -- to access that documentation click on the link, above (above the photo), that says, "SLM Documentation". Mitch.

Watch Syjuco online!

You can watch a video all about Stephanie Syjuco and this project here: http://kqed.org/arts/people/spark/profile.jsp?id=22692 also for any teachers out there, there is a corresponding educator guide -- same link! if any of you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can check out these projects in person until June 29, 2008 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts: http://www.ybca.org/tickets/production.aspx?performanceNumber=4024

Watch Syjuco online!

Speaker Question

Hello, this is my first attempt at something like this. The speaker I have is 32 ohm, 1watt. Could someone explain what, if any, changes I would need to make to have this speaker work? Thank You.

lucid slm firmware download

can someone post a link to download the lucid dream version of the firmware? I am new here and aren't REALLY good at computers in the terminal. i can do some stuff but if someone can post a download link or give really good instructions that would really help!

lucid slm firmware download

OCR1A

What's OCR1A and what does it do?

Pull-Tab Crochet

Piezo ceramic wafer

I’ve been checking the website of the company you recommend and I noticed that the wafer is way too expensive. Do you know where can I get the piezoelectric of these dimensions as salvage? I have worked with piezoelectric on clock signal generators for microcontrollers but they are tiny compared with the dimensions required for this project. Do you have any suggestion? Thanks!!

I Want to Buy a Brain Machine

Now that i'm done procrastinating this, I built it, it works, but it doesn't really doesn't affect me in the ways I thought it would. It's too weak. I went for an EEG once, and when they put a strobe to my eyes and got to a certain frequency I started feeling myself go under. I'm just not getting anywhere near the results I was hoping for. D:

sponge?

Thanks for the comment! Yes, I use sponge every now and then, especially for baby shoes and also for grown-up shoes. It gives that semi-casual, little bit of that sporty look to your leather shoes. I bought the sponge I used in this tutorial in Japan, but I am guessing you can use any sort of cushioning material that is similar to the ones used in regular sneakers. I usually use one with thickness anywhere from 3mm - 5mm depending on how I want it to look. Eve

sponge?

i actually have a degree in accessory design and can make real shoes and i have never heard of "sponge" that is referred to in this tutorial. i assume its some sort of cushioning. can someone help me out?

Applications for Lucid Dreaming

Hi Aru, I hope you had a good vacation. I just got back from China, myself (to manufacture ready-made versions of the Brain Machine, and also to make TV-B-Gone Pro SHP, and also to enjoy my travels. :) Thanks for the info. I'll be trying my OpenEEG with passive electrodes soon. Please let me know the results if you try and correlate the timing of your brainwaves with the timing of the Brain Machine while your wearing it hooked up to the OpenEEG. I am way curious to see if there is a correlation. Cheers, Mitch.

sound problem part 2

Hi a2lloyd, Sorry for the delayed response -- I just got back from China. I think that your Brain Machine may be working -- in any case, it is very close. The wire thickness is not a problem at all. And the capacitors can go in either way -- so no problem there, either. You mention that when you programmed in my updated firmware that the pitch was lower. That is a good sign, since the only difference with my updated firmware (on my CornfieldElectronics.com site) is that the frequencies are all an octave lower than the original firmware from this webpage. (I did that because the higher pitch was a bit too much like buzzing mosquitos.) The firmware should take about 14 minutes to go through the entire sequence of brainwaves (with the pitch of the sound and the blink rate of the LEDs changing every so often along the way) and then stop. Could you time yours and see how long the entire sequence takes before it turns itself off? If the timing is OK, then the only thing that can be wrong is the way you connected your headphone jack. Make sure that the ground wire is connected to ground on the board, and make sure that the ground wire is connected to the ground terminal on the headphone jack. Then the two other terminals on the headphone jack each go to one of the leads of the capacitor -- make sure that each terminal is connected to a different capacitor, and that there is no short between the capacitor pads. Please let me know how it goes. If by any chance you will be at the SF Maker this weekend (May 3rd and 4th), then come by my booth, and we can make it work. Mitch.