Tech Journal

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Well, I've got my EEG machine, but I currently can't hear out of one ear -- so, remind me in a couple weeks and I'll try to empirically test binaural beats. I'll have to extensively modify the code I have for interacting with the hardware, but I need a good excuse for tearing it down anyhow.

Side note: The EEG machine I got is an NIA, and it is powered solely by USB (the box is small enough to stick in a pocket, so potential wearable use, though looking around and moving around will cause enough noise to make it useless as a BCI keyboard/mouse/whatever). While it's packaged with an antistatic strap (presumably they want you to ground yourself), the instructions and warnings don't mention it at all, so maybe the folks at OCZ are less paranoid about differences in ground potentials than the OpenEEG folks. On the flipside, the NIA is set up such that it's mostly going to get eye movements and minor muscle movements -- probably not very good for 'clean' brainwaves just because of the location of the electrodes -- and the electrodes themselves are neither proper medical-grade for use with goop nor do they have built-in amplification -- so it's likely that many of the signals the unit gets will be ghosts of other ambient ELF EMR rather than legitimately sensed signals.

[Faust]

I got this little bugger in the post today.


It is something intend to have endless amounts of fun with in the coming weeks.

The first project:

Once fully operational I am going to hook it to my home network, TV and a removable hard drive. On the software side I am going to allow a connection via ssh to use it's services.

Say I hear about a show I want to watch at home, I'll just pass this baby the links to the show and it will download/ store them to the hard drive. when I get home I can use it as the media player and watch them from the tv.

I'm hoping to be able to get this working: If I ever come up against a nanny wall I can use this as a proxy to forward my traffic around the blockade.

After that comes networking my house to the device. Say I want the boiler on to heat the water for when I get in or the central heating to start up I'll be able to intercept their controls. The possibilities are endless, lighting/boobytraps/feeding pets...

Once the functionality is in place comes the phone plugin, I can ssh over my phone to devices so I can potentially make an app with centralized control of my home from my phone.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Nice! Presumably the pins on the upper left are I/O?

[Faust]

Nice! Presumably the pins on the upper left are I/O?

Yup, and it has two usb ports, hmdi out, component video out. Audio, and ethernet, not bad for 35$.

[Triple Zero]

OMG a Raspberry Pi!!

Is it the cheap one or the slightly less but still ridicuously so cheap one with extra USB?

[Elder Iptuous]

i think theyre only selling the fancy pants one to start out with, right?
I'm curious to see how well it works.

[Triple Zero]

i think theyre only selling the fancy pants one to start out with, right?

yeah unless he ordered real early, afaik.

[Faust]

i think theyre only selling the fancy pants one to start out with, right?

yeah unless he ordered real early, afaik.

Even than its the two USB model. I had to get up at six am for the launch to order. Three others from work tried at 8 and still missed out. I've set it up and played about configuring it a little. Next step is trying to ssh into it from outside the house.

[Triple Zero]

what was the monitor plug again? just TV-out, right? No VGA or HDMI plug? Was that hard to connect or did you have the proper cables lying around?

[Faust]

what was the monitor plug again? just TV-out, right? No VGA or HDMI plug? Was that hard to connect or did you have the proper cables lying around?

Actually it has both phono and hdmi out, pretty sweet for such a small board.

[Triple Zero]

Please to keep us updated on any sorts of awesome haxery

[Faust]

Please to keep us updated on any sorts of awesome haxery

Will do, the first part was really easy, I put on Debian squeeze, started up ssh on the Pi, and I was able to get links from my phone and laptop. I'm not sure how to do it from outside the house, I'll probably have to adjust the modems in built firewall settings.