Training neural networks with brainwave data from a children’s toy

Geoff Lord has embarked on an engineering adventure that involved turning a children’s toy into an EEG, training neural networks on the toy’s extracted data, and a successful attempt at mapping less-than-ideal neural activity data to intended actions.

I thought back to a toy my brother and I used to play with when we were young, the Mattel Mindflex. The Mindflex was a game where the users would don headsets that included an EEG capable of reading neural activity. This neural activity could then be used to manipulate a ball around a play area. After a brief search, it became evident that others had hacked apart these headsets to expose the EEG data they generated.

The Mindeflex headset required a slight hardware modification to gain access to the EEG sensor data. First, the device was disassembled which exposed the Neurosky EEG chip. Subsequently, this allowed for a small jumper wire to be soldered onto the chip’s TX pin. This TX pin was then connected to a microcontroller that takes in the EEG byte stream from the Neurosky chip and outputs parsed ASCII text to a console.

The parsing of the data was made easy by a preexisting library called Brain. The microcontroller was outfitted with a push button to allow for data collection analogous to the data used in the Neuralink monkey pong demonstration. While this experimental apparatus is not ideal, it provided a way to generate datasets at no cost.

Check out more in the post here.


Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 38,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — New Products 11/15/2024 Featuring Adafruit bq25185 USB / DC / Solar Charger with 3.3V Buck Board! (Video)

Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: A New Arduino MicroPython Package Manager, How-Tos and Much More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

Adafruit IoT Monthly — The 2024 Recap Issue!

Maker Business – Adafruit Daily — Apple to build another chip at TSMC Arizona

Electronics – Adafruit Daily — SMT Tip – Stop moving around!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !


No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.