Overview¶

This project demonstrates the use of the OpenBCI Ganglion, as well as a MyoWare muscle sensor, to control a small robotic car. Previous work using the myoware sensor can be seen here. The OpenBCI Ganglion is a board that will allows for the detection of brain activity. For this project, we will be detecting Alpha Waves and using them as a control input to the car. Much of this work is a derivative of previous efforts by EEG Hacker and OpenBCI.

Getting Started¶

This project will be using a slightly modified version of the OpenBCI GUI found here. This code is written and run with processing.

The hardware used in this project is:

• 2 x MBED LPC1768
• 1 x OpenBCI Ganglion
• 1 x Gold cup electrodes
• 1 x Conductive Paste
• 1 x Muscle Sensor with extension boards
• 2 x nRF24L01 RF transceiver
• 1 x H-Bridge breakout
• 1 x Battery Holder with Barrel Jack
• 1 x breadboard compatible barrel jack
• 2 x DC Motors
• 1 x Shadow Chassis

The Robot¶

The instructions for building the Shadow Chassis can be found here. Note that we did not use most of the parts listed in the guide.

Communication¶

Ganglion¶

The ganglion we are using was loaded with an older version of firmware, which needed to be updated in order to program it. Although we did not end up changing any code on the device, the instructions to update the firmware and to program the Simblee can be found here.

All of the information for setting up the Ganglion for recording, as well as the proper configuration of the electrodes can be found here. This project makes use of the Ganglion to collect EEG signals. This is done via the software that can be found here. There is an issue with the Ganglion compatible software, where you can not modify the code and build it from source due to a library packaging issue. Until this is resolved, live alpha wave capture using the ganglion will not be possible. The way we worked around this, was to capture our EEG signals in the newest software and save it to a file in the OpenBCI format. We could then load the recorded session into the older software, which we edited to detect alpha waves and transmit this information to the MBED controlling the car.

Alpha waves can be reliably produced in most humans simply by closing the eyes.

Processing¶