Tinfoil Hats Not Required

The What

We built a proof-of-concept app that displays colors based on the wearer's EEG (electroencephalography) signals, which represent the brain's spontaneous electrical activity. We also built an app that controls an Arduino-powered car via Bluetooth LE. The goal was to interface the two and control the car through either EEG signals or the values output by the headband's built-in accelerometer.

The How

The Muse headband has an Android SDK that we used to pull the data values from the headband's sensors to use as data input. The headband outputs 4 different EEG signals from different areas on the head as well as accelerometer values. For the proof-of-concept app, we used the EEG signals to generate colors. We also used an Arduino-powered car and an Android app to connect the car to a phone and provide control signals to the Arduino. After making both of these work, we combined the two to make the Bluetooth connection app also connect to the Muse headband using code we wrote for the proof-of-concept app.

Glitches In The Matrix

Using the EEG values to represent colors was surprisingly difficult, but the hardest part was definitely the Arduino-to-Bluetooth connection. The backend is written in Arduino/C and the app for connecting to the Arduino is written in Java for Android. However, we managed to get it working and connected to both the Arduino and the Muse headband. Combining the code for the headband and the Arduino to work in the same app was also complex. Also, driving backwards may or may not work...