Week 4 and a Whole Lot More!

The First 30 Days at Encephalon Games

I can’t believe it’s already been a month! It seems like the past four weeks have flown by. At the same time, I am incredibly proud to look at how much has come together. One month ago, there was no logo. Encephalon Games had no Couch Invaders, website, or YouTube channel. What a difference a month can make! You guys have been incredibly supportive of this dream. Thank you very much!

What the Heck is OpenBCI?

OpenBCI stands for open-source brain-computer interface (BCI). They are an amazing group of scientists, researchers, musicians, and plain cool people. More importantly, they have made a biosensing system that is both versatile and affordable. I finally had a chance to sit down with their Cyton board, and am already blown away with what it can do.

The OpenBCI Cyton Board is an Arduino-compatible, 8-channel neural interface with a 32-bit processor. It can be used to sample brain activity (EEG), muscle activity (EMG), and heart activity (ECG). Thankfully, it talks wirelessly to a computer using a USB dongle and Bluetooth.

What Can It Do?

This week I wanted to test both the EEG and the EMG functionality. First, I wanted to see what my brainwaves  (EEG) looked like and if I could affect them in any obvious way. Second, I wanted to see what EMG activity looks like. Since the EMG signal looked much simpler, I wanted to see if I could tie that to anything on my computer.

I was absolutely amazed at how much information comes through!

First, the EEG tests. For these I set up a series of stimulus experiments to see if anything obvious appeared in the recording:

• 60 seconds of nothing, just to get a good baseline
• 30 seconds with eyes closed
• 60 seconds listening to music (Blackbird by The Beatles!)
• 30 seconds of nothing
• 15 seconds of strobe light (that was about all I could take)
• 30 seconds of nothing
• 2 minutes of meditation

The spectrograph above covers the end of the strobe light and the beginning of the meditation. Even a quick glance reveals a dramatic change over the course of the sample. This should be further processed by a computer, however, for a more insightful understanding. The video shows the whole thing in a couple of minutes.

What About the EMG?

The EMG tests were a lot simpler. The basic idea is that you’ll need a ground (I used my elbow, you want a bony area). Additionally, you will need two connections per muscle. I can’t tell you for sure which Extensor muscle I was using, but as an illustration, here’s it looks like under the skin:

With everything connected, and a little trial and error, it actually worked! Specifically, it took a little time to figure out how to get my laptop to stream the data in a way that Python could access. By comparison, everything else just worked right off the bat.

I should be clear, I can’t take any credit for figuring this out! The code and idea come from an OpenBCI community project example, with the Python script hosted on GitHub. Obviously, if it weren’t for their examples, I would still be sitting in the corner playing with the cardboard box. In any case, I’d like to get through a few more of their example projects to get a better idea of how to take full advantage of this system. Once you work out how to get everything talking, it’s amazing what you can do!

What’s Happening with Couch Invaders?

So much! I’ve built a mock-up living room and the zombies can now come through the south wall. I’ve also got some really cool stuff to show you next week with the katana! I’m hoping to include an explosive little July 4th style surprise in the next video for Couch Invaders.

Overall, we are in fact getting closer and closer to a real alpha demo. Thank you guys again for being a part of this! As I have said, I couldn’t do it without your support.

-Mario