How the "Brainwriter" is overshadowing Google Glass and Oculus Rift at London event
By Lyndsey Gilpin July 3, 2014, 4:00 AM PST // lyndseygilpin
Not Impossible Labs just revealed the Brainwriter, designed to read and write brain waves for fully paralyzed people so they can draw and communicate, and it's now on display in London.
The Brainwriter is a $200 open source wearable that reads and communicates using your brain waves.
At a new tech exhibition in London on Thursday, sitting between Google Glass and Oculus Rift, is a wearable you've probably never heard of.
But it's the one that could have more of a revolutionary, world-changing impact than any of us realize.
It's called the Brainwriter -- and it's an open source, do-it-yourself device that pairs with ocular recognition technology to enable the fully paralyzed to draw and communicate.
It is on exhibit at the Barbican's "Digital Revolution" in London as the headliner in the "Wearable Technologies" section.
"Not Impossible is a very small rag-tag group of incredibly passionate people, so it's an honor being at this exhibition, being next to behemoth companies like these," said Mick Ebeling, the founder of Not Impossible, a startup based in Venice, California.
The Not Impossible Foundation raises money to fund the crowdsourced projects of the lab, which is run by a small team under Ebeling's lead.
The Brainwriter -- which is Not Impossible's latest project -- works with eye-tracking devices by replacing the eye-blink-or-dwell selection of objects on a screen with EEG, or basic brainwave instructions.
It's made from a headband, Olimex sensors, a shielding board, an OpenBCI board (which is an EEG device) and an eye-tracking device (i.e.
SYMeyes, Tobii or EyeTribe).
It is the first device of its kind that marries ocular recognition technology and EEG tracking, so that people can move a mouse with their eyes and select or deselect options with their brain waves.
It will be compatible with both active and passive electrodes and modern electronic platforms.
The EEG technology usually runs from $800 to $2,000 and can only interface with specific platforms.
But the Brainwriter's open source design will cost about $200.
As with everything Not Impossible does, the parts list and design are available on the site so that people can reiterate and improve upon them.
Read the rest at: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the ... -thoughts/
