[HN Gopher] EEG Cat Ears (2018) ___________________________________________________________________ EEG Cat Ears (2018) Author : searchableguy Score : 313 points Date : 2022-03-02 11:15 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (i2nk.co) (TXT) w3m dump (i2nk.co) | Nursie wrote: | Awesome project! | | We had some neko-mimi's a few years ago but the ear clip broke | very quickly. | gg2222 wrote: | Here is a fun demonstration of the Necomimi cat ears that were | noted as reference material for the project. | | https://youtu.be/fOrqZjvQ0JQ?t=527 | | Amazing work building your own btw! | Animats wrote: | Yes, it's a Necomimi clone. The big year for those was 2012. | They detect three mental states - idle/relaxed, attentive, and | surprised. I saw a group of cosplay girls wearing them at a | convention. Someone called out the name of one of the girls. | Her ears, and not the ears of the others, popped up. A review | reported someone playing a video game had their ears in the | "attentive" position while playing a level, and the ears would | droop between levels. | | Good idea, but too bulky. It needed cosplay big hair to hide | the machinery. The big head-mounted box is mostly the 4 AAA | batteries. If someone revives this, the mechanism needs to be | about half the size and better fitted to a head. | | The Nekomimi people also came out with a powered cat tail, but | that was a total flop. | KaiserPro wrote: | I do love a good write up. The concept and execution is great, | but what's most important is that they have shared the journey. | alexpotato wrote: | I was really impressed with the sketches. I always thought | those were more of an engineering "suggested best practice" but | this is a good reminder that a visual sketch can act as a | reference while also showing how pieces might fit together. | sebastianvoelkl wrote: | There was a really old version of this already 9 years ago* | *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP8kVEvm6h8 | resonious wrote: | Those exact ears were reference material for this project. | | > I began by looking at the youtube concept video for the | necomimi brainwave-controlled ears. My intent wasn't to copy | their implementation, but I was curious what kind of motion | they had decided on. | snarfy wrote: | Neat. I bought a pair at PAX many years ago. Sadly they stopped | working after a week or so. | LoveMortuus wrote: | The ones that you linked are called Necomimi, I bought them and | they still work. The one thing that they should really improve | is the quality of the motors because they are extremely loud | which kind of defeats the point of having a mode which shows | you your meditation state and relaxed state. I wish someone | would make an update and improved version. Another thing that | bothered me is that it needs FOUR AAA batteries, which is good | from the environment point of view. But very bulky and kinda | annoying from the UX point of view. | | The same company also made a tail, but I didn't have a chance | to test it nor did I buy it. | [deleted] | blobbers wrote: | A little surprising this isn't a kickstarter project partnered | with Neurosky. | | I have a few of their headsets and I can never bring myself to | get around to doing much with them. | | I should pull them out and give this a shot! | dmitrygr wrote: | Bought a similar thing a decade ago: https://www.necomimi.com/ | phnofive wrote: | (2018) | | Hoping for a v2 but couldn't find one. | writegit wrote: | Super cool project and write up. | | What's the state of EEG these days? | | Last I interacted with one of these systems it seemed more like | confimation bias from noise. | | Had a buddy who bought a "high end" headset, shaved his head to | "improve the signal", and it appeared for all intents and | purposes that it was mostly only reading concusive activity. He | would "show me it's working" by tapping on the exterior of the | sensors to get it to display a spike. | | Conceptually these systems "make sense" to me, ie. the brain uses | electromagnetism to function so one should be able to | sense/manipulate those vectors, but an FMRI is MASSIVE and | requires a 1-3 Tesla electromagnet to get its fidelity, and even | then is only measuring blood flow and correlating that to brain | activity. | | So what's the hope that a tiny sensor resting on your skin will | actually correspond to anything happening inside the brain? | ravi-delia wrote: | EEG studies are rife with issues, but there are a number of | very well replicated results. Obviously they do nothing to | localize an effect, but there are absolutely clear | correspondences between the readings of an EEG and at least | some cognitive activity. | | Will you get that nice FMRI resolution? Absolutely not. But the | effects you do get are fascinating, and super weird. | | Now that's the EEG I've seen in labs. Not sure if there is a | similarly good commercial offering. | caycep wrote: | the underlying concept of EEG hasn't changed since the initial | ones in 1929. Basically just electrodes trying to detect | whatever LFP (aggregate electrical potentials) comes across the | cranium. The clinical ones are considered a rough gauge of | brain activity, good enough to reliably detect large seizures | or a generalized slowing in patients who are delirious but that | is about it. | | There's MEG which tries to do the same thing but using magnetic | detectors instead of scalp electrodes, but those systems are | large and unwieldy | | In surgery, they do intracranial subdural electrodes which give | you better cortical LFP because the electrodes are almost | directly on top of the brain and not having to measure through | bone. | | Then there are the single unit electrodes or things like the | Black Rock systems Utah array where thin probes penetrate the | brain into deeper structures but obviously have much more | special circumstances where they are able to be used. | SkittyDog wrote: | EEG and MRI are based on two completely different physical | measurements. They have nothing whatsoever to do with each | otyer, in terms of why they work. Medical EEG machines are very | small, and their size relative to MRI machines does not factor | into how effective the EEG is. | | I mean, would you doubt that a stethescope can work, because | it's so much smaller than an MRI? No, that would be ridculous. | Same with your comparison vs EEGs. | | Just read the WP articles on MRIs and EEGs. You'll understand | it. | writegit wrote: | Is this written from the perspective of experience with | contemporary EEG systems or wiki reading? | | > They have nothing whatsoever to do with each otyer, in | terms of why they work. | | I thought my comment made my knowledge of this explicit? Also | I was referring to FMRI. | | >> and even then is only measuring blood flow and correlating | that to brain activity. | | My question is about resolution. FMRIs are our best tools in | terms of brain activity when concerned about resolution. | | A stethoscope can indirectly tell you if you have fluid in | your lungs, but "where" or "why" are far beyond the scope of | a stethoscope. | | A direct comparison would be: stethoscope : | is water in lungs? :: EEG : is brain in skull? | | One seems useful; the other, self-evident. | | So, EEG, is it /still/ confirmation bias in its ability to | read/interpret signals in the brain? | | Or has there been an appreciable development in EEG's | abilities/resolution/functionality? | SkittyDog wrote: | I'm not an expert. I did some undergraduate courses in | neuroscience, and one of those covered how various | instruments work, including MRI, EEG, and a few others. I | would invite anyone with a better education to correct any | errors they can identify in what I've said. | | And yes I DID just refresh myself on those WP articles I | mentioned :-) and they seemed pretty well written, to me. | | I also owned a NeuroSky a while back, and IMHO it was not | very useful... But that's because it was a toy, not a | medical device. Same underlying measurement principles, but | very different in terms of actual operation. | | One of the main differences is that medical devices are | always attached to _bare skin_ with _conductive gel_ | applied under the sensor. Also, medical devices have more | sensors. This vastly improves the signal quality, as | compared to the toy devices. | | In research work, medical EEGs have been successfully | controlling computers for several decades, long before | NeuroSky or the Necomini ears came to market. | | Tl;Dr, you don't need an FMRI to control a computer... EEGs | work fine, but none of the existing EEG toys have been | particularly well designed in that regard. | pedalpete wrote: | We're building an eeg device for sleep, and work with a | colleague who is on the Emotiv team, so I've got a bit of | experience. | | The state of BCI is improving, but one of the challenges is for | many of the things we'd want to do, you need electrodes placed | in areas that have hair. There are flexible sensors that can | find their way through hair, but as somebody with thick curly | hair, they are not fit for everyone yet. Then there is movement | that also needs to be considered for many of these devices. | | This is why something like Muse headband used for meditation is | a good starting point. You are placing the electrodes on areas | that don't have hair, and the use case is while being still, so | you have consistent contact without movement. | | At my start-up (https://soundmind.co) we're using forehead | mounted electrodes which measure your brain waves during sleep, | and we use sound to improve sleep performance. So like Muse | (which you can also use during sleep, but does not yet provide | stim), we benefit from measuring very small signals when you | are mostly still. | | I think if we were walking down the street with our headband | trying to control cat ears, you'd get lots of EEG artifacts due | to movement of the electrodes. | | My 2 cents. | svnpenn wrote: | Site does not work at all without JavaScript, I just get a | completely white page. | jd24 wrote: | Yeah, because the guy is animating in every image for some | reason | actionfromafar wrote: | Very cool! This triggered another idea - our ears already can | move a slight bit by its own muscles. Can't we read these muscle | movements, and amplify them by controlling the servo Cat Ears in | sync? Might be easier to learn to control, maybe. | JKCalhoun wrote: | I was thinking perhaps add a pair of microphones to the headset | and have the ears react to loud sounds -- attempt to angle | towards the source of the loud sound. | | Mux that in with the neural input. | yoz-y wrote: | It would be a better control mechanism. NeuroSky (the headset | used here) is only good as an eye blink detector and even at | that it's not great. EEG reading on the forehead, without gel | is always really bad because there are no obviously | interpretable signals (frontal cortex is way more complex than, | say motor regions or the occipital nerve), the skin is tougher | due to no hair, and is way too much muscle interference. | | Something with two electrodes behind ears (or wherever the | muscles responsible for moving ears are) could be even used as | a tool to train to move your (human) ears. | musingsole wrote: | The Muse 2 headset has ear and forehead sensors. I'm not too | up on EEG, but I'd believed the ear sensors were just for | grounding/baselining what's read from the forehead. | | Blink detection at least is pretty robust when I've played | with it. | | https://choosemuse.com/muse-2/ | yoz-y wrote: | yeah, ear sensors are for a ground and a reference, to be | able to remove noise from the EEG (basically you are trying | to have a channel which has no EEG) | | Muse is more or less couple of neurosky's glued together. | With multiple sensors you can at least get to know which | eye blinked, extract stuff like raised eyebrows and such. | But dry electrodes on the forehead will never really give | any good EEG results. | | There was a paper when somebody managed to get P300 working | with neurosky, but they needed to average something like a | 1000 trials. This is tens of minutes of looking at a | flashing screen. | daef wrote: | I just found https://alexandre.barachant.org/blog/2017/02 | /05/P300-with-mu... | nonrandomstring wrote: | I sat behind a girl at school whose ears would involuntarily | move. Like quite a _lot_! Like a dog. It freaked everyone right | out. | caycep wrote: | honestly, looking at the devices and not seeing the EEG traces, | I half suspect that a lot of the input is already muscle | artifact. Even w/ dedicated medical EEG w/ the fancy electrodes | and conducting goop, it's plagued w/ a ton of eyelid/scalp | muscle artifact. | anfractuosity wrote: | I saw something where someone tried to do that - | https://hackaday.com/2020/01/02/assistive-technolgy-switch-i... | | It seems to use a type of camera to measure movement in the | ear. | gambiting wrote: | >>our ears already can move a slight bit by its own muscles. | | Not everyone can do that though. My wife can easily twitch her | ears by just thinking about it, I cannot no matter how hard I | try - it's just like there is no nerve link to whatever is | there. | praptak wrote: | I only discovered how to move my ears when I was like 8 years | old. This suggests the nerves are there, just very non- | obvious to control. | rstarast wrote: | I think I learned how to move my ears once I started | wearing glasses -- at some point I was able to actively | move them up and down my nose a little through ear | movement. | totetsu wrote: | What does it feel like? Smiling without the smile? | praptak wrote: | A bit hard to describe (how would you describe what | moving your arm feels like?) | | I'd say a bit like raising my eyebrows, but the "tension" | is behind the ears. | webmaven wrote: | _> I 'd say a bit like raising my eyebrows, but the | "tension" is behind the ears._ | | For me the tension is pretty far back, basically halfway | to the back of my head on either side, and covers a | vaguely oblong patch that is about 1.5 square inches. | totetsu wrote: | Okay if I raise my eyebrows my ears come along for the | ride.. but I can move my eyebrows without the ears if I | think of it as moving my forehead.. so to isolate the | ears only I need to lock the eyebrows at max up or down | and try and wiggle them and see how it feels.. | praptak wrote: | Yeah, maybe start with trying to move your forehead and | the whole scalp. | user_7832 wrote: | Do you have (loose) spectacles? If yes, you can try to | make the spectacles move back and forth (moving back | requires flexing the muscle, spectacles moved front is | the "natural" position). If not, maybe take a friend's | pair? Lol just kidding, just use sunglasses. | | Honestly it's not some major movement and I only have 1 | degree of motion properly under control - I'm sure | there's more that I can't. It's not a very significant | thing irl. | zellyn wrote: | This is the first time in my 46 years that I've had any | success voluntarily controlling ear muscles. Amazing! | Every few minutes I'm able to wiggle my glasses _very_ | slightly, and then lost it completely after a few | wiggles! | goodpoint wrote: | The nerves are there. You "just" need to discover them. | gambiting wrote: | I mean, I've been trying for 30 years of my life and | haven't been able to, so yeah, no idea how you'd go about | it. | deredede wrote: | I spent hours in front of a mirror a decade ago until I | was able to move my left ear. Lots of trying to move | things that either did nothing or made me clench my jaw | or close my eyes, before eventually "feeling" my ear, and | then a whole lot more of that before seing it move. It | was exhausting, and even though I have a faint | consciousness of the corresponding muscles in my right | ear --- I have no desire to spend that time and energy | again. | robbedpeter wrote: | It makes sense for actors to do that type of thing, or | maybe martial artists seeking to discipline every part of | their body, but the time needed is too high for what's | mostly a party trick for regular people. | | Then again, maybe it gets easier with other muscles as | you practice and master more things - could it help | overall coordination, maybe improve typing speed or | balance? | robbedpeter wrote: | There are individuals who are more adept with their toes | than most people are with their hands, using their feet | to paint, draw, write, play music, and so on. It's a | repeated phenomenon, demonstrating neural plasticity in a | great way. | | Such abilities are latent in all of us, differences in | brain function that paralyze or confuse any part of the | body are very rare. | | You, too, can pull off an arched eyebrow like The Rock, | do ear wiggles, crazy eye rolls, and more. Getting good | at it seems to be a matter of methodical practice. | gambiting wrote: | >> Getting good at it seems to be a matter of methodical | practice. | | Yes, but I can practice moving my eyebrows to achieve | mastery, because I know how to move them at least a | little bit. With my ears, I literally cannot - no matter | how hard I think about it or how much I strain, they just | won't move. So how can you practice something that you | cannot do at all? Just "try harder"? I feel like that's | like telling someone with no legs to practice walking. | robbedpeter wrote: | Maybe tiny shocks like with a tens system, or a pinch, | used to jolt your nerves into recognizing the location? I | had a lot of trouble with my eyebrow arching, but | eventually got it by poking it with a straw or pushing it | around with my finger. | | Or maybe there's a genetic component, like tongue | rolling. The nerves and muscles are there, no sensation | seems to be lost, they're just arranged a bit different. | | Kinda cool how something trivial can go into these weird | rabbit holes, anyway. | goodpoint wrote: | We instinctively "try" and discover our motor control as | babies, depending on how much feedback we get the | movement. | | Unsurprisingly, hands are very popular. | | Other things like proprioception of our backs and general | posture can go unnoticed even as adults. I.e. it takes | careful focus and training to [re]learn how and what to | move. | ioseph wrote: | So I can wiggle my ears but only sometimes, right now I can | move my left but not the right, other times it's the right | but most of time I can't and it's like the nerve is | missing. It's usually something I notice when I'm relaxed | and horizontal | amelius wrote: | Probably similar to how tongue rolling is genenic. | mysterydip wrote: | Really extensive write-up, very informative. | TruthWillHurt wrote: | Nice project, but obviously from the single electrode and its | placement, the only EEG signal you'll get is eye-movement | artifacts... | Mashimo wrote: | Dang, that 3D printer needs some calibrating :D The first layer | looks horrible (Or it's very old) | pilotneko wrote: | It's a Makerbot cupcake, which is pretty old by this point (~10 | years). One of the first "affordable" 3D printers. | | https://makerbot.fandom.com/wiki/Cupcake | snvzz wrote: | Actually readable not dynamically loading archived version: | | https://archive.is/Axsy4 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-02 23:00 UTC)