Dream Machine Idea - Hooking A Strobe Light Up To A Timer

[iadr]

I was reading some posts on another dream site and got an idea from someone who mentioned hooking up a stobe light to a timer and setting it to go off at different times during the night when one would expect to be dreaming. This seems like it would be an incredibly inexpensive and effective method that might help in becoming lucid in ones dreams, as the strobe light could be set to go off every hour and half for 5 minutes of so. Was wondering if anyone has tried anything like this.

[Pandragon]

As a matter of fact... http://www.dreamviews.com/forum/viewtopic....ts+strobe+light

[jay dawg]

woah. i booked mark your post. im gonna look into getting that hooked up. great ideas. doesnt the BWgenerator having something like this? like with the pc monitor? not sure if u have to have the registered version to use it though. any idea iadr?

[Longest]

Would the strobe light wake you up halfway?

[Pandragon]

Well if you read through that thread, you'll see it's a process of adjusting the brightness and positioning the light correctly. It's best if you start with the light so soft that you just sleep right through it. Then you can slowly increase the brightness little by little each day, until it's bright enough to affect your dreams, but not wipe them out completely. I used sheets of red-colored, thin tissue wrapping paper to adjust the brightness. It's cheap and it works really well. Good luck!

[Middlerun]

I am planning on making something like this except with flashing LEDs, possibly set in a sleep mask like the NovaDreamer. However I don't particularly want to spend $40 on a timer system. Anyone know of a cheaper way to control the timing?

[Seeker]

how much are you willing to spend? You can purchase a small electronic alarm clock for about $7 and wire the LEDs to the speaker with a couple of resistors.

[Middlerun]

That might be OK, although I want it to go off for a few seconds about evey 90 minutes during REM, which might be a bit much to demand from an alarm clock. In other news...

[iadr]

Wow ! Thanks for the link Pendragon, and for excellent job you did in that forum of telling what you were using, and following up on how it was working. I shall try something very similar to this myself, and if I can get it to work will probably open your topic back up by posting to it, since you already provided so much fundamental information in that topic. As far as using the Brainwave Generator to produce a strobe light at specified times during the night, yes, you should be able to do that, and I will start looking into that. Excellent idea jay. Up until now I have just turned that part off under the Visual tab, but that could be used by selecting User Defined and then programming the first 90 minutes at 0 to keep it from producing any light flashing, then raising it to whatever level produces the kinds of light flashes you want when you expect to be dreaming. In order for this to work, you would need to have any screen savers turned off so that your screen would stay active, and you would probably want to have the screen as dark as possible by using a black background and eliminating as many of your desktop icons as possible.so that it produces as little light as possible until it flashes during the times you specify. Of course your computer will need to be close enough to your bed so that you can see the light flashes when they occur. Also with the Brainwave Generator you will not be bound by 1 minute intervals, as you can specify fractions of a minute if you wish. Great idea !

[jay dawg]

woohoo! i had a good idea! slightly modified from the above though. will it work inthe free version? i think when i try it i get an error or soemthing. not sure

[iadr]

woohoo is right. I had no idea that Brainwave generator was capable of doing this. Here are some simple steps to setting up Brainwave generator to flash like a strobe light during the night at the times you specify. 1) Select Options, then select Full Screen 2) Select Options, Visual Color Options 2) Put a checkmark in the Override Visual Color Options Of Individual Presets 3) Click on the 1st color and select Modify color 4) Set this first color to black as this will be the color your screen will start with and remain with until it begins cycling through the colors, which will leave your computer screen dark until the flashing begins. 5) Keep the second color as is 6) Select Add and select something like a bright red for the third color 7) Select Add and select something like a bright yellow for the fourth color 8. Add any other colors you wish or change any of the above you wish except for the first one. 9) Click OK 10) Open the properties box 11) Click on the Visual tab 12) Take the X out of the track another parameter if one is in there 13) Select the Visual Brightness dropdown box and select Full brightness 14) Set the first 60 or 90 minutes, however it long it takes you to start dreaming to 0. 14) Set the remaining part of the preset for whatever and whenever you want the flashing to take place. In my early experiments today it seemed like 20 produces a good flash. 15) Test the preset by changing the length to 1 and watching it, then change it back before actually using it. 16) If you want to set up a strobe light without any of the binarual beat sounds, just set the Sound Volume on the Sound tab to Zero Volume. 16) Under the Options menu there is also an option for using External Goggles (AudioStrobe) for anyone who wants to try this with goggles. Not sure if these features are available in an unregistered version, but it would seem well worth the price of $40 to have a registered version for all of this.

[EyeCanC4Miles]

I have a similar dream light. Mine uses an out-door timer that I use in my room, connected to one of those red light beacons like the ones on top of the old fire trucks. My beacon light was cheap. I picked it up a a BigLots a few years ago for like 5 bucks. The timer is very high quality though, and totally manual. You select the times you want the timer to activate the light or whatever other device that's plugged into it by moving the little switches on the dial. There are two down sides to this: Firstly, the beacon is noisy. It makes a scraping sound as the plastic part rotates in the lens. Secondly, the shortest setting (one tiny individual switch) is a whole 15 minutes long. I have found it to be way too long. When I have become lucid or even having an OOBE, the light stays so long that it kills the experience. I become too aware of the "real world". Now that Halloween is over, I'm going down to the costume shop to see if they have a cheap strobe light on sale. I think a strobe will be much more effective. I should have tried a strobe a long time ago. It's more like the flashing lights inside those expensive lucid dream masks.

[Twisty]

What time is it? Necromancy time? Yeah man.