Brainwave Processing App

[Vladiator]

I am interested in developing a brainwave processing application using LabVIEW. I found this hardware that Iod like to use:

http://store.neurosky.com/products/mindset

I am wondering if somebody already had experience with this device and can share their thoughts.

Thanks!

[Steve.J]

Hi Vladiator,

One of our applications engineers here at NI has put together a driver for the Neurosky headset. We plan to post the driver and a sample application on this forum soon.

Steve

[Vladiator]

Steve,

That's great - look forward to hearing about any updates on this.

Thanks!

[Vladiator]

Hi Steve,

When do you think you guys can post the driver? I am in a process of getting the device and would like to start working on an application very soon.

Thanks,

Vlad

[Steve.J]

Planning on posting this by the end of next week.  Does that work for you?

[Vladiator]

That would be perfect. Thanks a lot!

[Portland_Matt]

Hi Steve,

Do you have a driver for the Emotiv EPOC headset?

I've purchased the headset without the Emotiv SDK, and I'm a bit unimpressed with the software that ships with it.

There is no access to EEG signals.

However I'm a longtime Labview programmer and I'd lover to interface with the headset using Labview.

(I found a driver at www.labviewhacker.com, but I figured if they have one, then you probably do too.)

Thanks.

-Matt Hill

Portland, OR

USA

[Steve.J]

Hi Matt,

The driver on labviewhacker.com was actually developed here at NI by the same folks that did the Neurosky driver - it just hasn't been posted here yet.  We showed both of these drivers at the recent Biomedical Engineering Society show.

At the moment, the Emotiv driver only gives access to the processed data - no raw EEG - using the free driver that comes with the headset.  This is due to Emotiv's licensing for their developer kits - you must have the "research" edition of the SDK to gain access to the raw EEG stream which is costly ($750 for individuals, non-transferable and $7500 for larger companies like NI, and the resulting applications developed must be distributed through Emotiv's on-line store).  This has thrown a big damper on our ability to get you access to the EEG using LabVIEW.  I've attempted to contact Emotiv on multiple occasions to discuss other options with no response.  It seems obvious that a LabVIEW driver for Emotiv would be of great interest and could drive a lot of interest in Emotiv hardware sales, especialy in research and education.

Steve

[Portland_Matt]

Steve, thanks for the feedback.

It looks like my options are:

1. Use the software at www.labviewhacker.com without the development kit.  This gives me access to the top level outputs (Effective, Cognitive and Expressive suites).  This doesn't seem very usefull for exploring what the hardware can do, since it bundles the EEG into Emotive's "canned" output.

2. Spend $750 for the SDK and use the software found here: https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-16926 to interface the raw signals with Labview.

I'll try option 1 and see how useful it is.

If not, maybe I'll try the Neurosky device, however with a single electrode, it looks much less powerful.

Have you played with the Neurosky device?

Can you provide a review of how functional it is out of the box?

Also, I have a Pocket A3 from The Learning Curve and Bioexplorer.

http://www.brain-trainer.com/cgi-bin/shop.pl?shop=get_item&item_id=10

Do you know whether there are drivers to interface A3 or Bioexplorer with Labview?

Thanks.

-Matt

[Portland_Matt]

FYI, Here's the latest response I got from Emotive, which looks encouraging.

Hi Matt,

Much of our early product development used Labview. We are developing a suite of tools for researchers including Labview versions of Testbench. These will become available in a couple of months. In the mean time the solutions you mention seem to work reasonably well although we have not tested them rigorously. As Labview is designed for real-time contral applications using equipment wih far greater data rates than the EPOC I would be surprised if there are any fundamental problems, especially since our in-houe systems worked extremely well in the past! Existing apps will not work with your consumer headset.

Best regards,

Geoff