A major new release of Puzzlebox Brainstorms has been made available.


Puzzlebox Brainstorms - NeuroSky MindSet Demo (with annotations)

This release features:

- Ready for classroom use
- Complete rewrite using Qt Framework
- NeuroSky MindSet EEG hardware support
- Speed control tied to detected Concentration levels, with an additional boost granted for simultaneous high Relaxation levels
- Variable control duration allows robot to continue driving for as long as a detection occurs or as long as a button is held down in the user interface
- Visual style automatically adjusts and changes to match system theme
- Power voltage of LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot reported back to user interface in real-time
- Communications port for LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot can be modified at will by user without editing configuration text files





Documentation has been updated to reflect these changes.

Puzzlebox Brainstorms is currently integrating support for NeuroSky's MindSet EEG headset.

In the course of producing code which could communicate with NeuroSky's "ThinkGear Connector" developer tools it became desirable to produce a simple test suite which could emulate the complete ThinkGear socket protocol, both from a client and server perspective. This software permits development, testing, and debugging of MindSet applications on alternative platforms such as Linux and without the need for a physical headset.

Puzzlebox has packaged and made available these components as a distinct "Puzzlebox ThinkGear Emulator" download for the use of other developers interested in working with this particular hardware.


Features include:

- Implements the complete current ThinkGear Socket Protocol specification [2010-05-28 R2.1]
- Implements ThinkGear authorization mechanisms on both server and client side
- Support for Adobe SWF (Flash/Flex) Socket Policy File Request handling
- Server automatically simulates sinusoidal fluxuations for each "eegPower" frequency band as well as "attention" and "concentration" values for "eSense" detections
- Server automatically simulates a blink effect at configurable intervals
- Successfully tested with "Don't Fear the Dark" and "HelloEEG" demo applications
- Python Twisted framework based communications using the SimpleJSON library for best performance
- Includes automated setup.exe installation package (complete with menu entries and uninstaller)
- Released as Open Source under the GPLv2

A new release of Puzzlebox Brainstorms has been made available.



This release includes:

- Fully automated Windows installer including all dependencies to run the software
- Complete Desktop and Programs menu shortcuts for launching software under Windows
- One-click "local" client version with server component embedded and loaded automatically
- Text based configuration file for easy adjustment of default settings and device locations
- Fully automated uninstallation option for easy and clean software removal

Documentation has been updated to reflect these changes.

A new release of Puzzlebox Brainstorms has been made available.

Support has been added to run the software entirely from a Windows PC, without the requirement of a dedicated mobile device to relay control commands to the LEGO Mindstorms robot over Bluetooth.

Documentation has also been updated to reflect this change

We would like to take a moment to extend thanks to everyone at the Wadsworth Center responsible for assembling the 4th International BCI Conference which ran at the Asilomar Conference Center in Monterey, CA this past week, as well as all of the terrific presenters and attendees. Much was learned from both structured and informal discussions, and we look forward to implementing new paradigms and techniques now better understood to the project.

An extended research phase into the next series of features to be implemented by the Puzzlebox Brainstorms software has been completed and are now outlined on our development tracker.

The feature list can be accessed here.

Puzzlebox Brainstoms will be sending representatives and/or presenting at a series of events and locations in the coming months.

You can check to see where we'll be next here.

Puzzlebox Brainstorms Introduction Video (with annotations)