CHEAPEST light machine in the world (DIY)

So for those of you interested in binaural beats and light machines, here's a WAY cheap project (cost me nothing for the first one, i had everything lying around... second one was a whooping 6$):

What you need:

- 8 small LEDs (pick your colour, red is good because it's easy on the eyes and doesn't dilate the pupils, that's why they use red flashlights in astronomy or red light in photo studios)
- A printer cable (LPT. though i built my first pair with a male printer port and random wires i had lying around).
- A pair of glasses (plastic, comfortable)
- Computer (assuming you post on this board you have one. Even my computer was free, i got this 486 laptop out of a trash can, it runs DOS and WIN 3.11... though i do have a better computer ;) )
- Basic soldering skills + tools, skrewdriver + drill bits.

here's how you do it and the operating software:

http://www.hackcanada.com/homegrown/wetware/brainwave/

and here's how mine came out:

http://flight.thrice-blessed.com/files/gog1.jpg

http://flight.thrice-blessed.com/files/gog2.jpg

i realize they're ugly as hell (second pair looks nicer, it has a clean printer cable and nicer cheap glasses)

so far i only used it with sleep induction, basically just seeing how fast it can put me to sleep at night (15 min or less guaranteed)... i have yet to go in the high frequencies and try experimenting with lucid dreaming.

it's way easy to build and certainly worth the effort (plus it's not 150$!!!)

downside to it: you have a wire hanging from your face if you go to sleep with it, but it's still a perfectly good light machine.

Say man, that's the way I like it, cheap!!! I used to own a soldering iron, but haven't had the time to even pick it up lately :(

Have you thought about interfacing your goggles to a binaural beat program like BWGEN? The results could be interesting.

Let us know how well it works for lucid dreaming!

if you go on the webpage there's actually a stand-alone unit that works in synch with any sound pattern you give it (you just plug it in an audio jack)... kinda like an audiostrobe.

now, that one takes a bit more work but it could work nicely with a bw-gen cd. i'll try synch-ing a cd with that, see how it goes. it might be a second or so off, but that shouldn't matter too much...

last night i tried a 6 hz vizualization session and it was a pretty cool trip... i did it at 11 or so at night and the session was 18 min long... i started at 12 hz... wend down to 6... stayed there for 10 min and went back up to 10... yeah, it was cool.

This stuff is cool, alittle beyond my intelligence, like somthing out of a science fiction movie :)

here's a new version i just finished... this one actually costed around 5$ canadian (3 for cable and 2 for glasses)

http://flight.thrice-blessed.com/files/goggles.jpg

the differences are:

1) the leds, obviously. i added two green ones (given that you can control which ones go on and off, if i don't like the green ones i can just keep them off, but i understand different colours have different results, so i want to try it out)
2) the cable is now attached to the side of the glasses, so that it rests on the pillow (i sleep on my back) rather than dangling in the air. this way it weighs less on my face and i don't feel it as heavy as before
3) all the cables go to one side and are covered with the usual hot glue, but less this time. i use this so that the wires don't move around and break the soddering points.

why did i make a new one? first the comfort level and second it looks less cyber-punk so people will (hopefully) be less scared of it... when i show the other one to most people they think i'll poke my eyes out or something (the black cable in the first one is actually wires taped together with black duct tape, the port is uncovered and covered with hot glue, you get the idea)... this one looks cleaner and more "high tech" so hopefully people seeing it will give me a break :D

Wow im impressed, like somthing out of the Matrix movie! you could design your own model and get a © copyright for it....

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Originally posted by Mystical_Journey
Wow im impressed, like somthing out of the Matrix movie! you could design your own model and get a © copyright for it....

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bah, it's already been mentioned i'm not very obedient when it comes to copyrights (under certain conditions, i spend more money on music and books than i really should for instance... the problem is i'm more than willing to share what i buy with a lot of people, which isn't always very moral)... but anyway, getting a copyright over something just doesn't seem like something i'd ever want (considering what a copyright implies)... if i'd ever get something going it would certainly be open source.

anyways, that's a different topic than the thread altogether...

what i really wanted to say is i tried getting the goggles to flicker for a given amount of time at a certain interval (the 90 minutes off - signal - 90 minutes off - signal REM hit and possibly score technique)... i got everything mostly right, except that my function for counting the 90 minutes is way off, every time i try (i'm actually trying at 60 minutes). So i'm wondering if anyone has more qbasic knowledge than i do... (well, i'm not wondering, i know 100% a tons of people do have more qbasic knowledge than i do hehe, the question would be if someone here does have the knowledge and is willing to help :D )

I'm using the SOUND function to count the time... so a sound is measured in units that occur 18.2 times a second... so to get one hour i call a variable that does ((18.2 x 60) x 60) which should give me one hour right ? the number is also smaller that 65k (around) which is the time limit qbasic imposes for the sound function...

so what i do is i tell qbasic to turn off all the lights... play a 0 hz sound (no sound) for the variable calculated above... and start the flickering signal.

it works great with 25 seconds and 1 minute for as many cycles as i give it (most of it is variables) but when i set it for one hour, it made it 6 minutes on the first try and around 3 minutes on the second (i get it to print the time it signals on the screen)...

any ideas as to why this is happening ?

there is a timer function that counts down a given time, maybe i could use that instead ? kinda like

for x = 0 to interval
start timer here
when timer ends do flashing leds
next x

??? i should really learn more programing (can you tell i'm a fine arts student ?)

:mrgreen: gots it :)

if any of you guys are looking for a pair of glasses that will flash at given time intervals, try these and the small basic program i wrote: http://hybrid.concordia.ca/~victord/FLASH90.BAS


HOW IT WORKS
it will ask you for the port settings (888, 956, etc)... see the hackcanada.com instructions page for how to get the number (mine is 956).
then it's going to turn all the leds on.

it will then ask you for a number of variables, and i'll explain all of them:


SETTING UP THE SIGNAL
turn LEDS on for (seconds): - here you have to specify for how long do you want the leds to be on... you can say 0.1 seconds to... whatever, 30 if you want. experiment with that.
turn LEDS off for (seconds): - this is where you say for how long the leds should be off (same value, or different than above, if, say, you want the leds to be on for one second and off for half a second)
number of led flashes: - this is how many times to repeat the on-off signal (say you want the leds to flash 5 times for one second on, half second off, this would be 5).

At this point you're done setting up the way the lights will flash.

SETTING UP THE TIMERS
Number of signals: - if you want the signal to be repeated more than once after each cycle, this is where you specify it. I'll explain how it works after i explain all the timers.
Delay between signals(minutes): - this is the delay between the signals... NOT the delay between the cycles, keep that in mind.
Repeat cycle every (in minutes): - THIS tells the program when to repeat each cycle (once every 90 minutes for instance, in which case this would be 90)
How many cycles?: - 4 for instance will repeat the entire loop 4 times and then exit.

so the way the timer works is pretty simple. say you want the signal to be given every 90 minutes, but at the same time you want 2 signals at 5 minute intervals every 90 minutes... this is where the number of signals and the delay between signals comes in, repeating the signal and the time delay between the second signal. if you just want one signal every 90 minutes, you just have to put 0 in these two fiels (number of signals and delay between signals)

i know it may sound complicated, but it's really intuitive. if you try it once you'll see it doesn't take that long to set up and it's really not complicated at all.

so possibilities of signal are:

start<----------x minutes------------->XXX(flash)<-pause->XXX(flash)<-pause->XXX(flash) go back to start and count x minutes again

or just

start<----------x minutes------------->XXX(flash) go back to start and count x minutes again

(keep in mind if you add a 5 min delay between signals and you repeat that 3 times, the 15 minutes that makes will ADD to the 90 minute cycle, so the REAL cycle will be 105 minutes, even if you entered 90 minutes for the cycle... so if you add the delay between signals, be sure to take it out from the cycle timer... if you want 3 signals at 5 minute intervals every 90 minutes, be sure you enter 75 for the "Repeat cycle every (interval in minutes):" value.)

the good thing about the little program is that it's all variable based, so it's very customizable. the bad thing is that it takes some time and you can't save/load the settings (yet). another bad thing is that the signal only uses 2 leds (using all 8 leds was WAY too bright) and this is not customizable (unless you change the program yourself). Also, there may be bugs in the program (if you use 0 values here and there, or smaller than acceptable values or stuff like that, i'm not yet sure where these are)... so yeah, keep in mind i wrote this last night pretty quick and i didn't consider exceptions and all that.

in the future i might try to set up a load/save function and maybe use preset signals (where you'd control the frequency of the signal in times/second but not how the leds light up).

anyway, i don't know how to make an exe out of it, so you'll have to use qbasic to run this :) it's easy for me cause i use an old laptop running dos, but i don't know how well this will work in say windows xp so i'm sorry about that, i know it's a pretty nasty issue.

if anyone decides to use this let me know if it works for you.
i used it last night and the signals worked perfectly... the only problem being i take off the glasses while i sleep, so it so happened that every signal sent the glasses were probably on the floor (i'd wake up, see the timer had signaled, see the glasses on the floor and then put them back on... and the next time it would be the same thing, the glasses would be on the floor and i'd put them back on and fall back asleep) ...

what i'll probably add is also a key function that cuts the time of the next loop down to 5, 10 or 15 minutes or so... so if you wake up at 6 in the morning and there's 60 minutes till the next signal, you can just push the button and fall back asleep, knowing the mask will signal in 15 minutes instead, when you'll probably be in REM.

so yeah... i'm talking too much for nothing, the program is really small so i'm making it sound more complicated than it really is.

:goodjob:

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Originally posted by MeusOpusMagnus
what i really wanted to say is i tried getting the goggles to flicker for a given amount of time at a certain interval (the 90 minutes off - signal - 90 minutes off - signal REM hit and possibly score technique)... i got everything mostly right, except that my function for counting the 90 minutes is way off, every time i try (i'm actually trying at 60 minutes). So i'm wondering if anyone has more qbasic knowledge than i do

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Well, I don't have much QBasic knowledge, but it appears that it includes a function called SLEEP -- this sounds like it might do what you want.

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Originally posted by TygrHawk+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TygrHawk)</div>

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<!--QuoteBegin-MeusOpusMagnus

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what i really wanted to say is i tried getting the goggles to flicker for a given amount of time at a certain interval (the 90 minutes off - signal - 90 minutes off - signal REM hit and possibly score technique)... i got everything mostly right, except that my function for counting the 90 minutes is way off, every time i try (i'm actually trying at 60 minutes). So i'm wondering if anyone has more qbasic knowledge than i do

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Well, I don't have much QBasic knowledge, but it appears that it includes a function called SLEEP -- this sounds like it might do what you want.[/b]

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it's all good, thanks for the help though (i'll look into SLEEP too , might help with other things later on)

what i used was the TIMER function, it counts up to the variable i give it and when it's there it jumps to the led flashing subroutine. :) i'll try it again tonight... maybe before i go to sleep i'll get to add the 15 minute reset key... either that or i'll just set them up after i wake up to flash every 15 or 20 minutes, but it takes so long and i'm so lazy that i'll probably just say "skrew this" and fall asleep... we'll see ;)