New LabVIEW drivers for low-cost EEG headsets

[Steve.J]

NeuroSky Brain Computer Interface

NeuroSky is a company that has developed advanced ASICs for acquiring electroencephalography (EEG), simplifying the challenge of adding EEG to instruments and products for education or even entertainment.  NeuroSky has several headsets for sale featuring their ThinkGear chip that acquire EEG through a single dry sensor electrode.  The major advantage of the Neurosky headsets are the quick and easy setup - put the headset on like a pair of headphones and you are ready to go. Traditional gel bases EEGs can take up to 30 minutes to start acquiring data while the NeuroSky headsets are ready to go in seconds.  The Neurosky headset has only one forehead electrode (and ear clip reference) which, due to it's placement, will also pick-up forehead EMG and eyeblinks.

Go get the driver and example LabVIEW VI on NI Labs here:  http://bit.ly/LabVIEW-NeuroSky

With this driver you acquire actual EEG data at 512 samples/second into LabVIEW that has been bandwidth filtered and sharply notch filtered at line frequency (60Hz in the US).  Perfect for teaching basic EEG concepts, creating biofeedback applications in LabVIEW, or playing around with signal processing techniques.

Emotiv Epoc

The Emotiv Epoc headset is a more complex product, using felt electrodes that are soaked in saline solution prior to use. It has 14 channels of EEG, along with a gyro sensor for detecting head position.  This product seems to be geared more toward the gaming world with the goal of creating a even more immersive experience than just video and sound. The gyro sensor can be used as an accurate cursor pointing device and the EEG channels (which also pick up a good deal of EMG and eye movement) can theoretically be used to detect stress, attention/focus, etc. that could be used as other inputs into realistic game scenarios.  The software that ships with the device includes some nice demonstrations for training yourself to control an on-screen object through self-generated mental states - easy to get two states working (relaxed/meditative and alert) but training additional states is pretty tough.

Unfortunately, Emotiv locks down the raw (or minimally processed) EEG sensor data in their free driver, only allowing access to the gyro (up/down, left/right position) and 3 highly processed indices that related to facial expression ("Expressiv"), emotional ("Affectiv"), and cognitive ("Cognitiv") activity.  They don't say how these indices are calculated, so the value of the data you get from this free driver comes down to whether you can live with their processing results. For game developers, this is really all they want.  For biomedical teaching and research, there's not a lot of value.  Emotiv does sell a research version of the SDK ($750 for individuals, $7500 for enterprises, and $2500 for educational institutions).  We haven't ponied up the $7500 to develop a LabVIEW driver that gives you access to the raw EEG, and it's not clear how we could distribute this even if we did.  If there is enough interest, maybe we can work something out with Emotiv.

You can find this driver on the LabVIEW Hacker website here:  http://labviewhacker.com/epoc.php

Steve