OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA)

Example, if you dont know what it is..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B-E4IKcOmQ

The NIA, and similar two- and three-sensor 'EEG' headsets are almost worthless for the purpose of reading brain activity for control. You might be able to read gross state during sleep, and the sensors pick up facial muscle contractions far more than anything else (might be useful for reading expressins under the Rift), but the Emotiv Epoc is pretty much the lowest-end device that can actually do useful 'mind reading' if you intend to control something.

like edzieba says, since these cheap "neural" devices actually sense mostly face muscles contraptions and stress levels, they can be extremely useful to track basic facial movements and trigger some events based on our state of concentration/stress.
Optimally, they could do wonders if integrated fully into the headset, in conjunction with an integrated eye tracking camera inside the rift and a mouth camera under the nose to read the labial, to perfectly reproduce our entire face/eyes/mouth movements and replicate them in our avatar's faces!

Can a device like this tell the difference between your mind being very active and your mind at rest, ie with very few thoughts?

i was actually thinking of doing the same thing with the mindwave. let me know your progress! i'm very far off from receiving my kit. essentially i'd like to work on a free meditation program where you can choose a variety of environments that respond to how relaxed you are. this could range from soothing simulations like lighting a candle to more fast paced simulations like slowing bullets.
seeing as how these cheap input devices are very limited in their abilities, i think this is a good fit.
thoughts, peeps?

"codywu" wrote:
i was actually thinking of doing the same thing with the mindwave. let me know your progress! i'm very far off from receiving my kit. essentially i'd like to work on a free meditation program where you can choose a variety of environments that respond to how relaxed you are. this could range from soothing simulations like lighting a candle to more fast paced simulations like slowing bullets.
seeing as how these cheap input devices are very limited in their abilities, i think this is a good fit.
thoughts, peeps?

That's the sort of thing I was interested in. A meditation aid. I was thinking of making the environment more psychedelic, the more relaxed you became. So it would sort of work against you, the more relaxed you became, the more stimulating the environment became, making it harder to relax. Not sure how well that would work.

Can it be used in REVERSE. Subjecting people to its influence rather than reading?

haha, no. what you're thinking of is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). but even that technology is far away from being able to influence our thoughts, its used therapeutically for parkinson's and other dyskinesias.

this looks more promising than the other cheap eeg machines out there. i guess you could call it the oculus rift of eegs.
http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves.html
http://www.emotiv.com/

I have been playing with the OCZ NIA for a while and wrote software for it some years ago.
I am planing to revamp the project when my Rift arrives in August.

One of the benefits of combining OCZ NIA with Rift, is that you get contextual information (Rotation) from the Rift to help interpret EEG/EMG/EOG data.

It all really is not (yet) "Brain-computer-interface", but rather "Head-computer-interface".
Picking up EMG and EOG patterns is just much simpler with these devices than EEG patterns.

Comparing NIA with EPOC:

EPOC has more electrodes.
NIA has lower latency.

Both can be interesting.

NIA is cheap and doesn't have the DRM-bullshit of the EPOC.

Hey TheBlackBox, I am interested in your progress on Triathlon! Do you have a forum thread associated, or blog, or git repo?