Homemade LD Goggles!

**Whatsnext** · 05-31-2014 10:59 PM

I got this idea reading Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. IIRC LaBerge called light the #1 most effective way to externally induce an LD.

Inside are two blue LEDs

(Red is supposed to be best but RadioShack was sold out :3). Once you turn it on it waits an hour and then every ten minutes it turns on the LEDs for 7 seconds. The code runs on an Arduino.

It got me lucid last night on the first try. I was in a tree with a friend and the ground suddenly turned into a big blue ocean, and I knew what had caused it.

I just ordered some RGB LEDs (each one can be made to shine any color) and I want to make hypnagogic shape simulating goggles. They will have 4 LEDs, two per eye, and each one will, at random times, gradually brighten to a random color and then gradually fade away. The time it takes to fade in and out will shorten the longer you wear them. After they do that for 40 minutes they will switch into LD mode which is what I described above, they turn red for 7 seconds every 10 minutes. That's the design I have planned now anyway.

Wanna make one?

Stuff you need
Arduino Mega 2560 (any Arduino board will work fine but for other boards you may have to change the code depending on what pins you use)
Three jumper wires
12 feet of 22 AWG stranded wire
Two 300 ohm resistors
Two 5V LEDs of your choice of color
A breadboard
Sunglasses or safety glasses with plastic lenses
A drill
Some electrical tape (or a soldering iron if you're legit like that)

What you do
Setup the Arduino with your PC (instructions @ arduino.cc)
Use the breadboard to set up two circuits like this:

Where R1 is one of the resistors, D1 is one of your LEDs, the positive side of the battery on the left is a digital pin on the Arduino (I used 22 for one LED and 44 for the other), and the negative side is a GND pin on the Arduino. Use the stranded wiring to hook up your LEDs to the breadboard, 3 feet for each lead.

Drill a hole in each lens in your glasses (usually the packages the LEDs come in tell you the LED's diameter, so use a drill bit that's just barely bigger than the LED diameter).
Poke the LEDs though, tape them in there, and voila!

Now deploy this code to the Arduino:

http://pastebin.com/cLdMZ57F

**DragonSword** · 05-31-2014 11:19 PM

So I guess the big question is, are you going to include instructions and a parts list so we can make our own?

**Whatsnext** · 05-31-2014 11:24 PM

Originally Posted by DragonSword

So I guess the big question is, are you going to include instructions and a parts list so we can make our own?

Ok sure, I'll edit my post.

**SearcherTMR** · 01-14-2015 07:34 AM

Hi What's Next!

I saw your post in this thread and came here. I wonder if you had any further success with it after the first induced lucid, since your last post was some time time ago. I have the REM Dreamer which is supposed to be better as it detects REM Sleep and flashes RED leds, but didn't have success with it....

**robertcox88** · 01-14-2015 09:08 AM

This would have a been a perfect project for my principles of electronics class! Yea i am wondering how it worked out for you after that too. I just tried listening to music last night (music that is supposed to help induce lucid dreaming... don't know about that but it's nice music to fall asleep to) because sleeping with the light on is really difficult for me... so I was looking for something that could keep me somewhat aware while not screwing too much with the amount of sleep I get. This seems like a really good idea and it's easy to assemble.

**Whatsnext** · 01-15-2015 12:56 AM

Originally Posted by SearcherTMR

Hi What's Next!

I saw your post in this thread and came here. I wonder if you had any further success with it after the first induced lucid, since your last post was some time time ago. I have the REM Dreamer which is supposed to be better as it detects REM Sleep and flashes RED leds, but didn't have success with it....

Originally Posted by robertcox88

This would have a been a perfect project for my principles of electronics class! Yea i am wondering how it worked out for you after that too. I just tried listening to music last night (music that is supposed to help induce lucid dreaming... don't know about that but it's nice music to fall asleep to) because sleeping with the light on is really difficult for me... so I was looking for something that could keep me somewhat aware while not screwing too much with the amount of sleep I get. This seems like a really good idea and it's easy to assemble.

I would say that these roughly double my chance of LDing, but they don't work by themselves. I have to RC and stuff during the day. I also don't use them very often because they are uncomfortable. I've been thinking about carving something out of nice soft foam instead for a while, and putting everything in there on battery power. As I mentioned in the OP, I did add a hypnagogic imagery mode to the code, that slowly brightens and dims the (now RGB) LEDs randomly to simulate hypnagogic imagery. I'm not sure if that helps me WILD or not but it does seem to get me in a dreamy state faster. I also tacked on a 40Hz mode like I mentioned in that thread, but haven't tried it yet. I'm concerned it will be too bright the first time. The analog output channels on an Arduino are pulse-width modulation with a frequency of something like 500 Hz. That means that if you say "power this LED at half power" then it will power it at full power for about 1 ms, then not power it at all for 1 ms, then power is at full for 1 ms, etc. So if you want a true 40 Hz waveform you have to flicker the LEDs at full power and not use PWM. Otherwise your waveform will be a 40 Hz waveform ANDed with the 500 Hz PWM waveform. The brain probably can't tell the difference since 500 Hz is very fast, so if the way it is now wakes me up I'm going to try it with PWM so that the LEDs are dimmer. I go into this detail as a disclaimer because I have linked to the new code below.

I've never tried anything that senses REM, but my hunch is that it's unnecessary. If you just have your rig flash the LEDs every five minutes, then the very worst case scenario is that they won't flash until 5 minutes after you enter REM. On average they flash 2.5 minutes after you enter REM so you miss out on very little lucid time.

New code with 40 Hz mode and hypnagogic imagery mode added

**robertcox88** · 01-15-2015 07:43 AM

Hmm haha well right now my chances of Lucid dreaming are about 1/30 ... so if it only doubles it then it doesn't seem worth it to me. I would definitely prefer something with battery power since I wouldn't want all those wires around because I always move around before i go to sleep. I'm doing a lot more stuff before bed though so hopefully my lucid count increases. If I go from having an average of 1 lucid a month to 5... then the thought of doubling it even though I'm wearing something uncomfortable is worth it to me.

**SearcherTMR** · 01-15-2015 11:59 AM

Thanks WhatsNext.

I wish you good luck with the 40hz concept - although my own attempts with 40hz tACS yielded no results at all...

**Whatsnext** · 01-15-2015 02:46 PM

Originally Posted by robertcox88

Hmm haha well right now my chances of Lucid dreaming are about 1/30 ... so if it only doubles it then it doesn't seem worth it to me. I would definitely prefer something with battery power since I wouldn't want all those wires around because I always move around before i go to sleep. I'm doing a lot more stuff before bed though so hopefully my lucid count increases. If I go from having an average of 1 lucid a month to 5... then the thought of doubling it even though I'm wearing something uncomfortable is worth it to me.

I believe there's room to improve, also. If I wore them more often I bet I'd get better and better at recognizing the lights from inside the dream.

**FryingMan** · 01-15-2015 03:09 PM

Well, I have a remee which is basically a refined commercial version of this do-it-yourself project, and it has not gotten me lucid once. Either I don't notice it at all, or it wakes me up. I've noticed the lights in a dream all of 2 times despite probably more than ~150+ uses. It's not useless, though, since it helps noticing middle of the night wakings for WBTB.

**jd90** · 01-16-2015 07:21 PM

This is a great project! I'm a mechanical engineering student and trying to get used to electronics more, well the electronics here are simple enough but the code I'm new to. I've just got my hands on a raspberry pi, with a breadboard connected can I follow the same code or is it easy enough to learn? I'm guessing it a specific set of intervals and durations on some sort of loop? Ant info would be appreciated

**Whatsnext** · 01-23-2015 03:06 PM

Originally Posted by jd90

This is a great project! I'm a mechanical engineering student and trying to get used to electronics more, well the electronics here are simple enough but the code I'm new to. I've just got my hands on a raspberry pi, with a breadboard connected can I follow the same code or is it easy enough to learn? I'm guessing it a specific set of intervals and durations on some sort of loop? Ant info would be appreciated

Raspberry Pi won't run the same code, no. You can program them with a lot of languages but Python is the best supported (and is easy to learn). The Pi also only has one PWM output channel, which means you can only fade the light on and off on the one channel. The rest of the GPIO channels are pure digital so you can either turn them off or run them at maximum voltage, no in between. You might have some luck with software-side PWM, since the Pi's processor is way faster than Arduino's.