hello and welcome to weekend projects
and make magazine video podcast I'm
British and every week I bring a project
that you can make over the weekend this
weekend we're making a brain machine
I'm here with Mitch Altman creator of
the tv-b-gone and now creator of this
new project the brain machine how did
you get into this I was actually guinea
pig for a lot of brainwave experiments
in the University of Illinois where I
went like with the electrodes and stuff
yeah back then they had to glue them to
your scalp and but I was really
interested I've been meditating since I
was 13 years old and I read a lot about
brain waves and I wanted to see was I
really in control of the brain waves
that I was making and the answer turned
out to be yeah what is a brain machine
well this is what it looks like this is
the one that I built for the make
magazine article it pulses sound through
the headphones and pulses light through
the LEDs here in front of your eyes and
it goes through a brainwave sequence in
the case of this one that I did for the
magazine it goes through a sequence for
meditation bring you from awake into
deep meditation that out again feeling
totally wonderful so what materials do
we need to get started on this start off
with this kit which is called a mini POV
kit by ladyada there was a weekend
project about this earlier and this is a
really cool kid it's it uses a
microcontroller and with
microcontrollers by the way you can just
do some very simple little hardware
changes like I will do with this project
and change the firmware the controlling
software you end up with a totally
different thing than the original and
you're only limited by your imagination
of what you can do with microcontrollers
building a brainwave machine is just one
example let's take a closer look at the
parts we'll be needing to do this
brainwave machine the brain machine
starting with a mini POV kit here
we're gonna change a couple of resistors
here different than the original
we add a couple of capacitors and we
have a headphone jack we also needed
some wire to lead from these LED outputs
to LEDs right before your eyes and other
than that all we need are some el cheapo
headphones I got these for free from a
United Airlines flight that I have these
crazy patterns are available on the
website I'm gonna go ahead and solder
this up and put it together after you
build it you want to test it so you turn
on the power and the four LEDs that you
have on there should start flickering
for the mini pov because that's what the
firmware and the chip is now we want to
turn it into a brainwave machine so
we'll do that now
okay so we'll just plug this in the
serial port and back pretty easy that's
with the power off now it turned the
power on and it's ready for programming
okay so once the thing is plugged in
back in the serial port we download the
firmware from the make scene site and we
get these two files once we unzip it
make file and SL MC SL m dot C is the
firmware source code and make file is
the instructions to the software that
you downloaded that tell it how to
compile the firmware and program the
chip so all you have to do is type in
Nik program SL m and watch what happens
it compiles it erases the chip it
programs it it verifies it and it thinks
you it's a nice software
okay one more step you want to turn off
the power on the unit itself and then
unplug it from the serial port and then
you can turn it on you have a sound of
light machine so here we go if your
eyelids are relaxed you should start
seeing some pretty wild patterns by now
that was great who did you see I saw a
giant heart coming getting bigger and
bigger and bigger all sorts of patterns
it was very very big I was very relaxed
but it was very it was yeah that was a
good experience
yeah well that's meditation supposed to
be it's like relaxing and yet
invigorating
it's just blinking red lights and your
brain did all of that just your brain
creating your own little world and
that's what we always do that's what
we're always doing creating our own
inner world from what we perceive as
external let me show you what this looks
like when you put them on there's the
glasses and here's the headphones and
then let's turn it on so there you go
that's kind of that's what you'll hear
and see when you put these on I'm Bree
Pettis here with Mitch Altman and this
project is in make magazine volume 10 go
ahead and get it get the parts make it
on up and have a great weekend