The EEGsynth
We wish you a very happy new year! We had quite a year ourselves, and the future of the EEGsynth looks very promising indeed. I would like to give a short recap of where we are now, and where we will be focussing in terms of hardware/software development in the next couple of months. It […]
To link the digital signal processing on a laptop or Raspberry Pi to the analog synthesizer, I have made two usb-to-cvgate converters. The first one I designed and implemented was a one-channel version that is able to output up to (approximately) 5 Volt. The second one is an improved version with four channels that can be […]
On the evening of October 15, 1+1=3 performed together with Carima Neusser for a small invited audience at Jean-Louis’ studio. Those who have followed the blog will know that for some time we have been developing the possibilities of the EEGsynth to use muscle activity as a control signal for sound synthesis. This was our […]
Following testing of the one-channel CV/Gate controller and discussions with Stephen, I moved on and designed a four-channel version. The MCP4725 DAC converter used in the previous version can be combined with another DAC on the same I2B bus by removing a connection on the breakout board. However, the I2C bus won’t scale further. I […]
I completed the first Arduino based controller. It has a single control voltage and a single gate, both directly wired to a male 3.5mm connector. Using serial commands over the USB connection, it allows specifying the control voltage between 0 and 5V(*), and the binary gate value (TTL logic). *) although the design was meant […]
With my first post on the Arduino based CV/Gate controller I implemented a single control channel using a single DAC. Now, using four TI LF398 sample-and-hold ICs, I multiplexed the DAC output into four control channels. I updated the Arduino sketch and managed to control all four outputs independently. However, something that I overlooked is […]
I wrote some code that wraps the serial interface and the control commands of the Arduino CV/Gate into a MATLAB class. I used the following example code in MATLAB to benchmark the speed. a = cvgate(‘/dev/tty.usbserial-AH01DRO4’, 115200); a.voltage = 0; a.gate = 0; c = 0; t = tic; while true a.voltage = 5 * […]
We had our first EEG-Synthesizer jam with a smoothly working setup! Quite a milestone! In the following video and SoundCloud recordings (removed), you hear several interesting and evocative synthesizer patches created by Jean-Louis that are fully controlled in real-time by the EMG signals from my hand and arm. So in fact, during the recordings Jean-Louis was […]
The EEG signal processing, classification and the translation into a control signal is done on a computer. This means that the computer needs to be able to send control signals to the synthesizer. There are in general two options for interfacing with a synthesizer: Midi and CV/Gate. Midi is a digital protocol over a serial […]
Carima and I tested out the BrainSynth in new ways. Here follow her notes: I focussed on one muscle, the trapezius, testing its function and capacity for movement. We separated the electrodes on 3 different places on the same muscle, so that I could explore these 3 different parts of the muscle. For me the […]
Today tested some potentially interesting locations for surface EMG. For each you’ll find a video below. Note that only the lower MATLAB frequency plot is informative: Flexors of fingers Flexor of thumb Biceps Contractor of forehead (surprise expression) All seemed quite specific to the intended muscle (group). Of great help was this website with suggested […]
Today we were able to have a first try using the EEGsynth for dance, with the dancer/choreographer Carima Neusser, resulting in many new ideas and lots of inspiration! Small movements – such as an eyeblink – can be magnified and experienced. An Iphone armband works well for mobility, but it is something to get the […]
I recorded a short demonstration of the EEGsynth using real-time recordings of heartbeat (ECG), muscle activity (EMG) and eyeblinks (EOG). Ofcourse the brain is just as possible, but harder to demonstrate on my own. Importantly, we can use any MIDI controller to change parameters in real-time, and use MIDI as a control signal for any […]
Deleuze and Guattari use the terms “deterritorialisation” and “reterritorialisation” (we know that the terms are annoying to pronounce) frequently in their book “A Thousand Plateaus.” The two writers use “soft” concepts in the book which allow the ideas to change with time and context. For example, a child might have problems with reading and writing, […]
With: Jean-Louis Huhta, Stephen Whitmarsh and Per Hüttner August 19 Jean-Louis and Stephen arrive at midnight. Nocturnal swim and discussions about the individual work carried out in preparation for the workshop and what is expected of the days to come and how we can best reach these goals. August 20 Breakfast meeting and planning of […]
During our work meeting in Athens, we explored and tested the EEG-synth: EEG recordings controlling analogue synthesizers. What follows is a summary of how we solved the main technical and practical issues we encountered and those that still need to be dealt with. More about the output of the meeting will come in the next […]
In France we tried to reproduce neuronal functions with the synthesiser and listened to the outcome. This was great fun and Stephen is a really talented supervisor. Since my thesis is on hemispheric specialization I choose one theory which tries to explain differences in hemispheric processing by splitting incomming signals into relative frequency bands. I […]
Did we mention already that we have been awarded a grant from Innovativ Kultur?
This week I co-organized a research retreat at a beautiful French chateau, for Christian Kell’s wonderful group (department of neurology of the Frankfurt University hospital). During the Saturday-night workshop I presented our project and explained and demonstrated some principles of sounds synthesis. We then set to work to create synthesizer patches that simulated neuronal mechanisms of cognitive processes. […]
This week, thanks to Robert’s work on the openbci to fieldtrip-buffer (see previous post), I was able to record the first EEG using the OpenBCI system during a research retreat in France, with Christian Kell’s wonderful group (brainclocks.com). It took some time to figure out the pin setup on the board, but we finally ended […]
I compiled the openbci2ft application on the Raspberry Pi without any problem. The openbci2ft application interfaces the OpenBCI board with the FieldTrip buffer, which is a network transparent interface to real-time EEG data and which supports MATLAB, Python, Java and C/C++ interfaces to the data stream. The openbci2ft application is implemented as ANSI-C application, as […]
Yesterday my 32-bit OpenBCI board arrived. Today I have been working most of the day to get it to work with FieldTrip, which is my preferred rapid application development and data analysis platform based on MATLAB. OpenBCI comes with some example software. I was able to get the Processing example application up and running in […]
We are targeting the development at affordable EEG hardware and specifically have the OpenBCI system in mind. A 3D printed headset has been constructed in the OpenBCI project, but that is not (yet) easily available. Hence I am currently exploring some ideas for electrode attachment on my own. Although easy to put on, a hard-plastic headset is not trivial to […]
Last night I talked for hours with my dear friend David Holmes – a true thinker and inventor, expert in music and meditation, and uniquely talented writer (see his wonderful book on the mind, brain and its intimate relationship to sound and light). It was a crash course on harmonics, timbre, resonance, overtones and the […]
Robert has been busy programming the first MATLAB-MIDI interface, in both directions. You can find the code on the Github repository. Here you can see him playing his MIDI piano using the MATLAB GUI that he made. And here the MIDI piano is played, displayed on the MATLAB GUI.
To record EEG data we will use the OpenBCI project’s 8bit board The OpenBCI board comes with a Bluetooth dongle based on the RFduino. Processing of EEG data will be done using the Raspberry Pi B+ The Raspberry Pi B+ will be connected to an HDMI monitor for the GUI as well a mini MIDI controller (e.g. the Novation […]
For the purpose of developing the Python code, I’ve installed Virtual Box, on which I installed CentOS 6.6. I had an impossible time getting the Guest Additions installed, which are needed to be able to map USB ports, until I found a site with Virtual Box images with Guest Additions pre-installed. I then downloaded the […]
We plan to develop the final EEG-synth user-interface in Python for several reasons: It can be run on the Raspberry Pi (on the Debian-based Rasbian operating system), with is our target system for the final ‘product’ It has a great number of libraries for numerical calculations, serial and MIDI interfacing, and graphical display It has […]
Think Python, How to Think Like a Computer Scientist by Brian Downey Synthesizer Cookbook by Fred Welsh Make: Analog Synthesizers by Ray Wilson Thomas pointed out these fantastic posters with synthesizer basics To get some (virtual) experience with modular synths I installed LiveProfessor, a free VST host. In this, I installed the Fre(a)koscope VTS plugin, […]
I registered on GitHub, and created a repository to share our developing code. For now I just tested it by uploading the lastest OpenBCI python code. You can find the repository here.