Thread: REM Detectors (again)

I'm trying my damndest to investigate alternative methods of detecting REM.
In theory, I'm doing well. In practice, its damn hard to find the right sensors for this stuff, without paying big money for the displays and equipment. I just want the damn electronic sensor

Does anyone have ideas on how to source finger sensor electronic components (ECG), finger oximeter components, galvanic skin response (GSR) components... or anything along that line?

I have a kickarse idea for a novadreamer replacement, but I guess the above question should pretty much tell you where I'm going with this...

PS
The reason I want to do this, is 'cos LD has to be my LIFE before I get decent consistency of them. I would like to have periods of LD relaxation, while still enjoying LD's with no effort. I do believe in learning how to attain LD's naturally, but I have a life outside of DV sometimes

The easiest way is still an IR transmitter/reciever pair connected to a sensitive operational amplifier. The difficulties lie in keepint it from getting erroneous reading.

One idea that was floated a couple of times is to just forget about detecting REM and just doing it with a timer.

If you keep a fairly regular sleep schedule, it should be possible to predict when you are in REM and fire off the flashing. For example, I get up at 6am every morning and always awake remembering a dream, therefore, if I set it to 5:30, there is an almost 100% chance I will hit a REM phase.

If I could get away with it, I would set up things to flash a couple of bright flashlights on me. Problem is, I don't sleep with things on my head and my wife wouldn't like flashlights going off all night long

I like the idea of detecting REM
Rather that, than be woken up in the night cos of a damn flashlight
I also don't like the idea of sticking IR in my eyes

Anyway, my idea was to have a glove with finger oximeter or pulse meter to detect REM, and a vibration or tiny shock in the palm of the hand as the external dreamsign
I may still do it, but there's a lot of snags to the idea

I have an idea about flashing, but I haven't tested that yet :

If you have your computer in your bedroom (or a sceen / TV in your bedroom connected to your computer in an other room), and if like Seeker you can predict when you are in REM you can try something :

You can make a 1024x768 flashing picture between 15hz and 10hz like this : http://gbacorp.free.fr/malan/images/ld.gif
Then go to the control panel, open the task manager, and create a new task sheduled at the time you think your are in REM (note that the configuration wizard only allow .exe files, so choose any file and when you finish the settings, edit the task and choose the file you have create, or my file "ld.gif")

So, your computer will open the flashing picture at the time shuduled, in your REM state. Your file must be open in full screen (no problem with ACDsee, or Internet Explorer [F11]), if you have another software, try to find the way to open files in full screen mode (or nearly).

Finally set a black wallpaper on the desktop and go sleeping. The picture is flashing 80 times and stop

You can test if you want

I have read of a PET (positron emmission tomogrphy) for brain imagaging and an FMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging. But I don't know much more than their names or if they would be of any help. Hope so.

Thanks, but they're unlikely to help since (1) they're damn expensive and (2) they involve putting contraptions and gunk on your head normally

Originally posted by Placebo
Anyway, my idea was to have a glove with finger oximeter or pulse meter to detect REM, and a vibration or tiny shock in the palm of the hand as the external dreamsign
I may still do it, but there's a lot of snags to the idea

How will that detect REM?

Pulse rate(definitely) and blood oxygen (I think) change drastically between delta and REM. Thus can be used to determine REM.
Like I said it has snags, like determining that change requires some logic, and thus some digital electronics
And it has to be adaptable to determine the high and low levels for each individual

On the positive side, it means with a little extra work, you could gather information about the vital statistics of a person while sleeping, and determine their REM cycles

OMG! That could work! Not too difficult either.

Control algorythm something like this:

Wait for pulse to drop below 72
Arm device
Wait until a pulse > 75 has been detected for more than 30 seconds
Start flashing

Heartrate monitors are very cheap. Most athletic stores sell them and they are popular with joggers.

Any objections to moving this to the Research team?
I see this going some where.

You are surtainly not short on ideas placebo.

[quote]Any objections to moving this to the Research team?
I see this going some where.

You are surtainly not short on ideas placebo
Hehe, thanks. Go ahead ... thing is, I notice people don't always check out the research section
Wonder if there's a way to fix that...

Seeker, when you say heartrate monitors are cheap... like.. how much?
The cheapest I find is 20 dollars, and (1) thats too much for my exchange rate - I was hoping for something closer to 10 dollars, and (2) how the hell would I figure out the raw data coming from the sensor?

Hope I don't buy a sensor and then blow it

I'll research it a little, yeah, $20 is about the cheapest and you would have to dismantle it. All you really need is a pulse alarm, something that would energize a relay or something when your pulse got above a certain level. You would just have to remember to arm it just before sleep.

I think it'll be a little more complicated because everyone's pulse is a little different, depending on health, how much coffee they drank, etc
But thats the basic idea, yes

We can call it the DreamCatcher glove, and sell it on DreamViews!

Better get the patent quickly!

And the heartrate monitoring between different users could easily be solved with a little smart programming into the device making it keep a record of the person using it and determining their average heartrates. That is if you are serious about creating this device for more people than just yourself.

Personally I think it is a very good idea and could be the inexpenssive alternative to the damnable Nova Dreamer!

Maybe use a monitor like that for a night, keeping data somehow, and see what heartrates plateau at. That would allow for sensitivity adjustment.

And if you were to memorize morse code, then you could introduce phrases into the dream

Originally Posted by Mickeys_Elbow

Better get the patent quickly!
And the heartrate monitoring between different users could easily be solved with a little smart programming into the device making it keep a record of the person using it and determining their average heartrates. That is if you are serious about creating this device for more people than just yourself.
Personally I think it is a very good idea and could be the inexpenssive alternative to the damnable Nova Dreamer!
[/b]

Thanks
It's turning out to be a pain to organise. As soon as I've got money again, I'm gonna take a drive to an old friend of mine who's one of those wierd old knowledgeable men
He'll be able to give me some ideas, I'm betting

I have access to small industrial controllers. It would be a snap to program the logic into one of those to take care of monitoring and administering the vibrations. Unfortunately, the smallest of these devices is about the size of three cigarette packs. A little big.

No worries - a few altera chips will probably do the trick.
It's the sensors that are a problem so far

That guy I want to visit is quite impressive with electronics and mechanics, his advice might be invaluable

Here is a recent post CHEAPEST light machine in the world (DIY)

Thought it might have some similar interest to your Idea Placebo.

I like the pulse idea quite a lot and i have a few ideas about solving things (however my electronics skills aren't the most elaborate)...

here's the deal, you can do mostly ANYTHING with a computer and you don't have to worry about programming chips (PIC being the easiest to use, and it's still a pain in the ass to get going)... so, if you take one of those heartbeat monitors from a watch and you figure out how to connect it to a port, you've got yourself a chance of having the rest of the work software based (which a lot more people can do than electronics).

i would assume an lpt port would be able to both power the sensor and record the feedback. all you have to do is setup a program much like the dream maker (is that what it's called? the rem goggles with IR detection and dos-operated software?) to record the rate of the pulses and show a graph at the end of the night... this would show you when individual people have rem's (assuming you'd see it in a graph) AND you'd know what the critical value for signaling is... from there on you can either have a pair of goggles stuck to your face (using the same lpt, built following instructions as in the link that was posted above) or you could make the computer signal to you.

i think light signaling would also be the best option simply because it's been proven to work better than any other stimuli.

Thanks for the link, I actually didn't see that thread
I've been pretty lazy about browsing the forum lately

Good job on the glasses - I may try make one

I know what you're saying with the computer, and since I'm a programmer myself that would make sense
However it results in one of the following:
1) Wires to your body (read: not good while sleeping - would like to avoid this)
2) Wireless technology (read: increased complexity + cost)

A friend of mine has already programmed a few chips so the idea was to rope him into helping me program it
All it needs to do is to record information, and to detect REM
Then it will be possible to plug the device into a computer and download that information for analysis
The last idea is optional, since it would cause more work for me :

That causes other problems:
1) Standalone power. Not so tough in a world of batteries
2) More complex circuitry + higher cost. But then again, you'd have had to detect REM with the pulse monitor anyway That's not going to be as simple as the glasses. This is more like a problem with using pulse monitors

To use the light sensors means:
1) You have a device on your face
2) You have lights in your eyes - not exactly 'unintrusive'
3) You have wires

Now, I'm not saying the idea of light is necessarily a bad idea ... because the pulse may in fact not be a very reliable detector for REM
The light sensing is likely to be easier and more reliable perhaps
And so far, it's the only feasible device in existence
But it means having that device in your face, and lights in your eyes. I'm not that keen on that personally

I'm just throwing points around, hoping for some new ideas

Maybe you could put the settings down as low as they can go and put a dog collar around your neck ajoining it to your REM. Then have it jolt you when Rem begins.

Originally posted by Howetzer
Maybe you could put the settings down as low as they can go and put a dog coller around your neck then ajoining it to your REM have it *jolt you when Rem begins. *

it's true about the wires being nasty, but they would allow for more data recording than a programmable chip would (the more memory the chip has the more expensive it is). i like the idea of a mask because two red leds aren't all that "shocking" when they start flashing, especially since red doesn't dilate your pupils. i also like the idea of a device linked to the hand because let's face it, it's easier to sleep with an oversize watch than... oversized glasses (no one sleeps with glasses on anyway)... and in that case i see how wires could be REALLY problematic.

so yeah, it's a tricky one.

my best bet i think is still with a mask, get the rem detection happening at the side of the forehead and have one wire moving away from your face... in which case it would be a lot like sleeping with headphones on.

but i have another, more important question:

how reliable is the rem pulse method ? i know i build a kvasar and junked it... it took me one month to convince the guys at hamamatsu that i was an electronics company and i needed two samples of the IR sensor... and i ended up breaking the pins on both samples after some 3 weeks of trying to get the ir led and the sensor placed right... it picked up blinking, but not subtle rem movement (IR light is not dangerous for the eyes btw)

anyway... maybe we could start by finding a way of hooking up one of those wristwatches to the computer and figuring out how the data acquisition would happen (how the monitor send the information) and just how reliable rem detection would be (which would involve i guess sleeping with wires attached to your hand for a few nights)... then go on with the research ?

(i'm really interested in this project because i've lost all confidence in ir detection)

Originally posted by MeusOpusMagnus
my best bet i think is still with a mask, get the rem detection happening at the side of the forehead and have one wire moving away from your face... in which case it would be a lot like sleeping with headphones on.

I have trouble with headphones too

how reliable is the rem pulse method ?[/b]

I'm honestly not sure. We would need to test it I guess
And not just one subject, you'd need to test multiple subjects

i know i build a kvasar and junked it... *it took me one month to convince the guys at hamamatsu that i was an electronics company and i needed two samples of the IR sensor... and i ended up breaking the pins on both samples after some 3 weeks of trying to get the ir led and the sensor placed right... it picked up blinking, but not subtle rem movement (IR light is not dangerous for the eyes btw)[/b]

After all that ... hahaha

anyway... maybe we could start by finding a way of hooking up one of those wristwatches to the computer and figuring out how the data acquisition would happen (how the monitor send the information) and just how reliable rem detection would be (which would involve i guess sleeping with wires attached to your hand for a few nights)... then go on with the research ?
[/b]

Yep. The problem I see is that its not gonna be easy to figure out what the wristwatch (or whichever device we butcher) pulse monitor sensor interface is like. Power, inputs, outputs etc
I was trying to source the sensors, but damn it's hard to find in my country

Another problem I face is that I'm not an electronics whizz
I have friends and work colleagues that might be able to help though

(i'm really interested in this project because i've lost all confidence in ir detection)[/b]

Is this because of the IR sensors that weren't sensitive enough?
There's a chance that IR detection is more reliable :/

I've been thinking more about the benefits you could get from the pulse idea
- We'd be able to activate it in slightly deeper sleep, etc ... possibly inducing lucidity at steadily lower levels of sleep. Maaybe.
- You end up with nice analog output data, that you can use to determine how healthy your sleep is (knowledge is power)
- It's more comfortable on your hand, than on your face. Perhaps a wire on your hand won't be too bad?

On the negative side... 1. Complex to work with and 2. A little more costly (I think)

When I get money in again, I'll try get myself a cheap finger pulse meter, and butcher it

http://www.bioscience.org/2003/v8/s/1105/figures.htm

bpm's don't sound too promising.



the burts frequency and burst amplitude change significantly, but the BPM's stay almost the same. So you'd need better monitors than the average pulse watch that you can buy in a sports store. but if the difference is higher than say... 7-10 bpm's (on average) it could still provide a decent reading.

and my beef with IR detection is not that it's not reliable, it's just hard to get right (at least from my experience with the kvasar)... maybe on smaller eye surfaces it's not as reliable as on bigger eyes, i dunno. the only way it would become very reliable would be to have two ir sensors that compare data, either on both eyes or on the same eye.

maybe i'll try getting another ir sensor and give the kvasar another shot, but it was a real pain getting it.