Thread: Presenting: Halographs

I'll go ahead and ask the question: Can you describe in more detail what a halograph is?

A halograph is a headband with biofeedback sensors, designed to be inexpensive but able to detect if the user is dreaming.

OH is this an extension of that thread you made a while ago (might have been someone else but you joined in) with the EEG?

Also, what's the numbers across the bottom? It looks like every 100 is 10 seconds?

EDIT: Holy crap, I just read your about page. You're a fucken savant!
How old are you?

Yeah. The numbers on the x axis should be 0 to 60 - I will fix that. I take a sample from the hardware 10 times a second, so that is where the confusion comes in.

EDIT: And Thanks. I am older than I can relate to you in your understanding of space and time.

Ah! kool, makes sense then. But yeah would be better the other way.
When I have some money I think I will buy this.

Awesome, thanks! But I guess I better keep my day job until then...

A biofeedback device is still a very vague description. You might be on to something brand new here, which is great! Is your biofeedback device able to communicate through bluetooth? It is some sort of a wireless headphone setup, right? If you make this device compatible with the next generation of smartphone/tablet lucid dreaming apps, you may be able to quit your day job After you hire a copywriter

Nothing brand new, I am afraid. Just some of what is already openly available, only that it works out of the box without the need for a soldering iron and years of coding experience. Perhaps I can send you a demo device one day to answer your other questions and hopefully get a plugin working in your Android Lucid Dreaming App...

As for the copy-writing - I am not too concerned. I hope to build a solid rep.

Hehe, well there is not a large group of lucid dreamers really, and an even smaller group who have money to spare, because most are teenagers.

But, the good thing is you could open up a whole new avenue for people to get in to LDing.
And I agree with Ev, you need to change the descriptions a bit on the website, dumb it down for the laymen.

Oh yeah, I liked the claims and the disclaimer haha

Yeah, I know. I used to be one of them - thus the need to build and invent my own.

Could use some help watering down the descriptions - that is not my strength.

And thanks, the claims will allow for a rather different ad one day!

Originally Posted by tommo

Hehe, well there is not a large group of lucid dreamers really, and an even smaller group who have money to spare, because most are teenagers.

But, the good thing is you could open up a whole new avenue for people to get in to LDing.
And I agree with Ev, you need to change the descriptions a bit on the website, dumb it down for the laymen.

Oh yeah, I liked the claims and the disclaimer haha

I'm looking at the 2011 google IO recording, and found this video. particularly minute 18-22 Google I/O 2011 . The implications of this are pretty big. Here's the link that they are talking about Android Open Accessory Development Kit | Android Developers Pretty much Android devices would be able to run usb connected accessories(read portable EEG, etc). This may have pretty big implications for lucid dreaming. Since most of the processing/gui/memory/etc is software, the devices can be manufactured pretty cheap. Think a 3000$ proprietary device stripped down of everything but sensors, some filtering logic and a usb hub and sold for 50$. A good example would be REM dreamer, stripped down to the barest circuits and driven by an Android app.

As for the teenagers, they grow up, and get jobs

Originally Posted by Ev

I'm looking at the 2011 google IO recording, and found this video. particularly minute 18-22 Google I/O 2011 . The implications of this are pretty big. Here's the link that they are talking about Android Open Accessory Development Kit | Android Developers Pretty much Android devices would be able to run usb connected accessories(read portable EEG, etc). This may have pretty big implications for lucid dreaming. Since most of the processing/gui/memory/etc is software, the devices can be manufactured pretty cheap. Think a 3000$ proprietary device stripped down of everything but sensors, some filtering logic and a usb hub and sold for 50$. A good example would be REM dreamer, stripped down to the barest circuits and driven by an Android app.

Interesting.
That's really all I have to say lol I'll watch the video.

Originally Posted by Ev

As for the teenagers, they grow up, and get jobs

Yeah, definitely, but a lot of them also stop LDing. Otherwise there would be heaps of older LDers on here.
However I assume this is usually due to not being able to have enough LD's, or maybe life pressures.
If it's the former, this device could change that.

Coder - I could help you write those descriptions if you want. I wouldn't say I'm a poet or anything, but I'm just thinking, that
since I barely understand any of this stuff myself, if you described them to me fairly well, I could break it down in to layman's terms.
Although I'm sure other people could do this too if you just posted information about them in this thread, people could provide simple explanations for them.

The Android OADK looks very promising - thanks for the links. Is it ready yet / have you been able to develop against it? I agree that all the pieces for extremely low cost and accurate lucid dream-inducing devices are already available... someone just has to put them together under a good name.

And thanks! Let me try explaining again; halographs are headbands with sensors in them, designed to detect REM sleep. The Halograph Frequency Monitor (with the output pictured above) is sensitive enough to detect heartbeats and eye movements. When eye movements / blinks occur every ~3 seconds for ~1 second, the user is dreaming. And Lucid Scribe is a freeware application that displays and logs the output from a halograph and can trigger events e.g.: play mp3s or flash the computer screen. Lucid Scribe works with plugins that are loaded through an interface - other coders are welcome to develop their own plugins: Lucid Scribe SDK. It is real easy.

From what I understand, the OADK is a custom firmware for an arduino board. If it is so, then I may use my current lillypad arduino (wearable e-textiles board) to create a simplish REM detector with bluetooth for transmission. Hardware prototyping and debugging is a lot more tedious than software development, so I have not done anything serious with the board yet.

As for this thread, it is a good place to dig for FAQ about your device. It is obviously very much ahead of the currently available stuff on the market. From looking at your SDK documentation, it seems to be some flavor of C, right? If you develop this as an iPhone app, it should be fairly successful. Plus, from what I understand, there's 1 iPhone with a few software versions vs ove 370 different Android devices.

My biggest question that I'm still fuzzy on is - what wireless protocol does the device use? If you can create an interface for wireless equipped devices (ex: iPhone, Android) to interact with that, they may sell pretty well. I think the whole market for Android after-market accessories will pick up in the next couple years, unless the world ends tomorrow!

Originally Posted by IAmCoder

A halograph is a headband with biofeedback sensors, designed to be inexpensive but able to detect if the user is dreaming.

oh really? what if you're snoring? Is there a possibility that it can affect the holograph?

EV, thanks. The arduino board sounds very promising too. How long does the battery last?

The interface for Lucid Scribe is in C# - you can download the express edition (of Visual Studio) for free and should be able to get the millisecond sample running in a few minutes.

I am afraid I don't have any wireless tech yet: just good old USB. Does the trick and keeps the cost down.

Originally Posted by lopsarong

oh really? what if you're snoring? Is there a possibility that it can affect the holograph?

Sure, it would just add more noise to the graph, but the blinking should still be visible.

Arduino can run off a AAA battery (850mAh) for quite some time. Exactly how quite, I cannot say, proably 4 hours. There are crazy li-po battery packs available, up to 6000mAh, and those convert from 3.7 to 5.0v, so they should last for a week or two.Plus there are all kinds of low power sleep modes you can activate for both the board, bluetooth and even sensors.