Thinking of Making My Own LD Induction Device

[BlairBros]

Hey everyone, I'm not sure if I should post here or in tech talk but here goes. I have recently been thinking about making my own LD induction device. I am studying mechatronic engineering at university and think I have/can develop the necessary skills to create my own device. I am in the earliest phases of ideation but have come up with some initial ideas, and the simplest one I have come up with so far is detecting heart rate (which rises in REM sleep compared to NREM) and using that to trigger either LED's or a short bit of music to induce lucidity. I was also thinking of having an accelerometer near the heart rate monitor to detect whether my heart rate increase is due to moving about or due to being in REM. Hopefully that would create a decently accurate indication of when I am dreaming. I would probably use an Arduino or raspberry pi board to control this, and potentially connect it to my phone or laptop to keep track of the data (maybe in a nice graph form :p). At the vey least I think I will be able to keep track of my heart rate throughout the night, perhaps in 5 minute intervals, and even if I can't get an induction device out of that the information of when I am in REM throughout the night would be useful anyway. Only concern I have is that wearing a heart rate monitor for 8 hours could become quite uncomfortable lol. If anyone has any advice on whether my idea seems feasible or help with regards to how to make the device I would be extremely grateful. Thanks in advance! BlairBros

[Valis1]

It seems possible. Maybe the device could also measure skin conductivity like a lie detector machine, if REM had some correlation with moister levels on the skin, I am not sure if it does or not. I had a idea of implanting a suit with hundreds of small vibration motors, which moved in sync in such a way that made the person feel like he was moving. My thought is that something like this could help induce WILDs. This idea just came to me, what if instead of light or music a cloth arm band had a small vibrating device which went off when the machine detected REM state. If you could do this without waking the person up I think it would be a good way to go about it.

[ThreeCat]

I think not enough has been done with vibration as a indicator of lucidity, but that more should be done! The only problem I see is that physical sensation may be more likely to wake the user up. Go for it!

[Sageous]

I don't know if you've already done this, but you might want to do a search for Stephen LaBerge's original research into the best physical activity to track to identify entry into REM. I could be wrong (it's been a very long time since I heard him discuss it) but I think he experimented with many different things, possibly including heartbeat and galvanic change, and found that the most reliable activity to track was eye motion. I think making your own induction device is an excellent idea, but don't be afraid to use -- and maybe improve upon -- the devices of the past. Good luck!

[Highlander]

The work of Michael Paul Coder of DV and Lucidcode may be of interest to you. He has looked into various methods of biosignals and detection methods which include the heartbeat algorithm which may be of use to your scenario. He has also looked into EEG, EOG, (muscle signals) and TACS (as in Voss) methods to name a few; including the use of cams, arduino hardware, etc... plus he codes well! Other sites which may help in your research include Hackaday and Instructables. However if you are a maker then you will already be aware of the latter examples perhaps? You may want to look at the breathing rate too, along with the temperature changes. Maybe correlating the 3 (or more) states could give you a more accurate indication when you are in REM. Your hardware could include a Bluetooth device to send your data to your computer as an idea. For example, those 'phone apps mainly rely on accelerometer motion detection (that you have already mentioned) in your smartphone when it is resting near you on the bed. That could be a starter maybe? (I'm not endorsing the accuracy). If you are really brave then what about NPT (Nocturnal Penile Tumescence) as a possible REM pointer or indicator. Personally I have mainly used the optical (IR) detection method that Sageous has already mentioned, although I can see why vibration cues might be of benefit too. Some of the guys on here have tried it from what I remember. Current study requirements puts a dampner on my research efforts at the moment tho. All the best.

[BlairBros]

Thanks for all the good ideas everyone! I looked at Stephen Laberge's research, along with some other studies, however there isn't a huge amount of data on heart rate during sleep, and most of it has to do with variance in EEG readings which I know nothing about. However if I record myself as an example throughout the day and night to find my own baseline heart rate during wakefulness, NREM and REM that should hopefully give me enough information to work with. I will also look into how to monitor breathing patterns as the fluctuations of that combined with heart rate would be a pretty good indicator of REM sleep. @Highlander I have heard of Instructables and read a bit of the lucidcode website and I will definitely be utilising them more in the future . @Valis & Threecat I will definitely consider using vibration, if it works well then it would be much easier to use than sound clips or leds (connecting a sensor to a computer and back to led's near the eyes will be tricky without having it all built into a mask, which would probably be huge and bulky and uncomfortable). Having a little wristband or finger ring or something would be awesome if it works well. I might not be able to get too much done on this for another couple of months until the end of semester but I will try to do as much as I can and learn as much as I can in the meantime. It feels good to work on a project you are passionate about, hardly feels like work :p. EDIT: I searched around for a heart rate sensor and found one that looks perfect, except it costs about 50 bucks, which isn't cheap. If it is the best/only option though then I will get it as it is fairly accurate and Arduino compatible and provides sample code, which is nice.

[Highlander]

EDIT: I searched around for a heart rate sensor and found one that looks perfect, except it costs about 50 bucks, which isn't cheap. If it is the best/only option though then I will get it as it is fairly accurate and Arduino compatible and provides sample code, which is nice. Maybe you could use/hack a cheap pulse oximeter sensor perhaps? You would need to find online, or write your own (ardunio) code though to interpret the analogue signal; post op-amp.

[BlairBros]

I haven't ordered any components just yet but I wrote a draft program for the Arduino, using an RNG to simulate my heartbeat, and it works pretty well . I've hooked it up so the results get sent to a text file along with a timestamp such that I can easily import it into an excel sheet and make a nice graph out of it. Now I just need to add in the functionality of triggering lucidity through sound or light or vibration and it should work functionally. Down the track I would like to perhaps automate the whole process so I just start and stop the program and don't have to create the excel sheet myself, but I'm not 100% sure how to do that. Perhaps a c++ program could do it, idk. Anyway that's a luxury feature, and I'm happy with it just working basically haha. I might buy the heart rate sensor in the next few weeks, and then I can get truly cracking.

[Goldenspark]

You can make a heart-rate sensor using a reflective infra-red optocoupler, which you strap to your finger. The blood pulses in your finger are picked up as small changes is reflectance at the IR receiver. It's a very easy way to get a heart-rate. It's actually very similar to the way the smart-phone apps do it using the camera and flash.

[IAmCoder]

Thanks for the mention Highlander! I'd be happy to write a converter so the text file can imported in Lucid Scribe... this is what a 60 second snippet with heart rate data looks like: We could also roll a plugin for Lucid Scribe to connect to the raw data feed and trigger lucidity once you know what to look out for. I haven't been able to find a pattern to look for yet... this may help: http://www.psycho.hes.kyushu-u.ac.jp...ings/P-205.pdf. And this: It is an increase in the chaotisity that you are looking for (decrease in D2 degree of freedom) here is the references : Nonlinear analysis of continuous ECG during sleep II. Dynamical measures J. Fell, K. Mann, J.Roschke, M. S. Gopinathan Department of Psychiatry, University of Mainz, Untere Zahlbacher Strasse 8, 55101 Mainz, Germany Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, 600 036 Madras, Chennai, India Received: 7 June 1999 /Accepted in revised form: 10 December 1999