Get in on the ground floor as we look at the most exciting crowdfunded tech projects out there right now. This week: Emotiv Insight, a wireless headset that’s designed to monitor your brain activity and translate it “into meaningful data you can understand,” in the project team’s words. The project has already raised almost 10 times its $100,000 goal, and roughly three weeks remain. You likely already know the things you like to do, like watching a sporting event, as well as the things that you don’t like to do, such as sitting in traffic. We all experience feelings when participating in such activities, and those feelings form the basis of a personal body of knowledge that we draw on to know whether we like doing a thing or not. Discounting philosophy, theology and other studies of the human condition, that’s life. However, it’s all a bit unscientific. It’s also pedestrian for this day and age, and doesn’t play into another element of the human condition: mankind’s desire for self-awareness and curiosity. Emotiv reckons it’s come up with a solution. Namely, what if you could measure your brain’s responses to those mundane activities, number-crunch those measurements and come up with scientific insight? Analytics for the brain, in other words.
What Is It?
The Emotiv Insight device is a wireless headset that tracks and records brainwaves and generates data. Tracking measurements include attention, focus, engagement, interest, relaxation, excitement and stress levels. Basic mental command interpretation is also included and consists of levitate, rotate, push, pull and disappear. There is also detection of facial expressions such as blinks, frowns, expressions of surprise and smiles. An API is also part of the package. The device is compatible with multiple operating systems, including mobile ones like Android.
Technical Details
The headset consists of a five-channel radio for producing Bluetooth signals and dry polymer sensors that don’t require saline. A 480 mAh battery is included. The headset works by monitoring the electrical impulse that gets emitted by brain nerve cells called neurons. Five sensors measure these impulses; two are reference sensors. The device covers multiple parts of the brain, resulting in in-depth brain activity data, the developer says.