Looks like Hack A Day has a link to a complete teardown of the OCZ NIA. I'm not much of an electronics guy, but it looks like they almost have all the components pegged. Each little bit is labeled and it looks like there is a programming head (that mystery connector I noted), though no word on whether anyone has successfully written to the PIC.
Interesting to note, that the device is USB 1.1 only (well USB 2 'full speed'), meaning 12Mbps max transferred. Sampling rate is 3.9kHz, 24-bit. Like I mentioned, there is an amp that measures the difference in voltage between the outer electrodes, presumably for eye movement detection. Lots of other neat stuff, so have a look.
Another interesting NIA thing I found was a guy who has been 'training' with this and does a decent job of moving forward and shooting, though not much else. He, too appears to have grounding issues.
Showing posts with label ocz actuator. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ocz actuator. Show all posts
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
OCZ NIA gets nekkid
Some pics to whet your appetite (much better pics to follow)...
Meh on the construction. Look ma! No metal. Good thing they're not trying to conduct electri... oh wait...
The amp (sans warranty!)
3 Prongs for the headband piece. Probably the center channel grounded via USB and the side channels recorded differentially.
Note the mystery connector.
Meh on the construction. Look ma! No metal. Good thing they're not trying to conduct electri... oh wait...
The amp (sans warranty!)
3 Prongs for the headband piece. Probably the center channel grounded via USB and the side channels recorded differentially.
Note the mystery connector.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
OCZ NIA in da house
It was here when I got home, so yay!
Initial impressions:
- Very nice packaging
- Decent build quality
- Obviously a work in progress on the hardware side (anytime I see holes in the frame that were obviously used for an external power plug, but lacking a connector behind them, I know things are in their version 1.0 form)
- Software isn't horrible, but definitely needs more options (for instance, the 'Pong' game used to train can only be played with the muscle signal)
- The glance control is abysmal (eye movement detection/EOG)
- Grounding is problematic - I could only use it is I had my hand on the box
- Amplifier overload is waaay too sensitive - if you wiggle out of the detection range, there is a lockout of several seconds
- Needs more and better manual controls
- Needs more and better feedback - depending on how you count them, there are 8 control signals, but you only get an analog trace for muscle activity
All in all, it is pretty much what I expected. Right out of the box it is nearly impossible to control, and you really need to sit with it for a good hour to get a feeling for how to modulate the signals. I will say that it has a decent amount of potential, but from what I can tell, it will not be replacing a mouse anytime soon.
For instance, once I began to get 'good' at the Pong game I started thinking of funny ways to bring up the device in lab meeting. Of course, that made me smile, which blew my control right out the window. When I realized what was happening, I tried to suppress the smile, which must have engaged antagonist muscles because it was just as bad. I had to relax and stare blankly at the screen, which kinda scared me.
Why? Because in order to use this interface, I had to be completely devoid of emotional reaction. Holy Dystopic Futures, Batman! Some nutjob will interpret this as ALL BCIs requiring this 'feature', but that isn't the case. Still, I couldn't help but think of zoned out emo teens staring blankly at their screens, and they disaffectively advance military robots on the other side of the world.
So, there needs alot more work on an adaptive filter for the NIA. That's a problem with most EEG (and less for EMG) devices, and really a requirement when compared to intracortical recording. Basically, EEG is listening in on millions of neurons, and those neurons have 5,000 - 10,000 synapses. The resulting slow wave rhythms are the aggregate signal of all that mess.
People like to use the stadium analogy - that you can tell what is happening in a sports match by listening to the cheer of the crowd and knowing who the home team is (EEG), but you get more information by listening a single person (single unit activity) - but that analogy has one major flaw. It ignores that there are signals of far more diverse frequency and amplitudes, and that inhibitory signals are part of the mix. In essence, you're listening to a stadium at 2,000 feet with an "As seen on TV" sound amplifier, with an unknown distribution of home-to-away fans, of which a random distribution have laryngitis or transplanted dolphin vocal cords, and many of which are watching other games on their portable TVs and cheering more for that game as much or more than the game you are observing. And then there are random nutjobs just running around screaming for completely unknown reasons. (Security must be very lax at this stadium!)
See why single units are better? No nutjobs. Oh wait, no, I mean more info per channel. Pull out 20 random fans and you might be able to figure out things like the score.
Anyhow, enough EEG ranting. If you can filter out all the garbage, which you can't, you could theoretically get a good signal. But, you can't. So devices like the NIA should be looked at purely from a functional standpoint. If I could do a little training, have the cursor follow my eye (for games, this would be the mouse/look control), assign two keys to muscle activity (forward and backward/W and S keys), and alpha waves to left click (shoot), I would be happy. As it stands, I can't. I can get some very basic muscle, poor neural, and essentially no EOG control. That makes me a sad panda.
I'll play with it some more over the week and post regarding any changes. Ah, operantly conditioned association... you will have to be my friend a little longer... (Hats off to the Fetz crowd!)
(I should mention that if I had to decide today between the OCZ Actuator and Phil Kennedy's system, I would go with Phil's. I never posted a review because of some concern regarding the use of lab items for review purpose, which I think is fair, but the Neural Signals device (EOG, EEG, EMG, piezo-switch, light touch switch) was really snazzy. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a link to it anywhere on their page.)
Initial impressions:
- Very nice packaging
- Decent build quality
- Obviously a work in progress on the hardware side (anytime I see holes in the frame that were obviously used for an external power plug, but lacking a connector behind them, I know things are in their version 1.0 form)
- Software isn't horrible, but definitely needs more options (for instance, the 'Pong' game used to train can only be played with the muscle signal)
- The glance control is abysmal (eye movement detection/EOG)
- Grounding is problematic - I could only use it is I had my hand on the box
- Amplifier overload is waaay too sensitive - if you wiggle out of the detection range, there is a lockout of several seconds
- Needs more and better manual controls
- Needs more and better feedback - depending on how you count them, there are 8 control signals, but you only get an analog trace for muscle activity
All in all, it is pretty much what I expected. Right out of the box it is nearly impossible to control, and you really need to sit with it for a good hour to get a feeling for how to modulate the signals. I will say that it has a decent amount of potential, but from what I can tell, it will not be replacing a mouse anytime soon.
For instance, once I began to get 'good' at the Pong game I started thinking of funny ways to bring up the device in lab meeting. Of course, that made me smile, which blew my control right out the window. When I realized what was happening, I tried to suppress the smile, which must have engaged antagonist muscles because it was just as bad. I had to relax and stare blankly at the screen, which kinda scared me.
Why? Because in order to use this interface, I had to be completely devoid of emotional reaction. Holy Dystopic Futures, Batman! Some nutjob will interpret this as ALL BCIs requiring this 'feature', but that isn't the case. Still, I couldn't help but think of zoned out emo teens staring blankly at their screens, and they disaffectively advance military robots on the other side of the world.
So, there needs alot more work on an adaptive filter for the NIA. That's a problem with most EEG (and less for EMG) devices, and really a requirement when compared to intracortical recording. Basically, EEG is listening in on millions of neurons, and those neurons have 5,000 - 10,000 synapses. The resulting slow wave rhythms are the aggregate signal of all that mess.
People like to use the stadium analogy - that you can tell what is happening in a sports match by listening to the cheer of the crowd and knowing who the home team is (EEG), but you get more information by listening a single person (single unit activity) - but that analogy has one major flaw. It ignores that there are signals of far more diverse frequency and amplitudes, and that inhibitory signals are part of the mix. In essence, you're listening to a stadium at 2,000 feet with an "As seen on TV" sound amplifier, with an unknown distribution of home-to-away fans, of which a random distribution have laryngitis or transplanted dolphin vocal cords, and many of which are watching other games on their portable TVs and cheering more for that game as much or more than the game you are observing. And then there are random nutjobs just running around screaming for completely unknown reasons. (Security must be very lax at this stadium!)
See why single units are better? No nutjobs. Oh wait, no, I mean more info per channel. Pull out 20 random fans and you might be able to figure out things like the score.
Anyhow, enough EEG ranting. If you can filter out all the garbage, which you can't, you could theoretically get a good signal. But, you can't. So devices like the NIA should be looked at purely from a functional standpoint. If I could do a little training, have the cursor follow my eye (for games, this would be the mouse/look control), assign two keys to muscle activity (forward and backward/W and S keys), and alpha waves to left click (shoot), I would be happy. As it stands, I can't. I can get some very basic muscle, poor neural, and essentially no EOG control. That makes me a sad panda.
I'll play with it some more over the week and post regarding any changes. Ah, operantly conditioned association... you will have to be my friend a little longer... (Hats off to the Fetz crowd!)
(I should mention that if I had to decide today between the OCZ Actuator and Phil Kennedy's system, I would go with Phil's. I never posted a review because of some concern regarding the use of lab items for review purpose, which I think is fair, but the Neural Signals device (EOG, EEG, EMG, piezo-switch, light touch switch) was really snazzy. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a link to it anywhere on their page.)
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Site note, Hard drives, and OCZ
Few quickies (possibly more later tonight - I'm feeling ultra-productive again).
1) In order to be more timely with news, I'm going to begin a weekly link dump on Sunday for the previous week's items. I'll try to make it as enjoyable as possible. This will begin next weekend (seminar to prepare for on Monday). Also, I'm still waiting on my laptop, and as soon as I get that, I will post Super Paper Xday. I don't like dealing with the slowdown of VPN access to campus and I download all these papers as I compile the list.
2) Another few hard drive developments worth noting. I mention hard drives alot because I know we all deal with gobs of data regularly. Hell, right now, Matlab is about 4 hours from filling up my main hard drive.
As we all have seen, the last major upgrade to hard drive technology, perpendicular recording, has run it's route. So, there are a few things on the horizon. Most notably, Sony recently announced a new method of increasing the density of data on each platter, predicting 2.5TB notebook and 5TB desktop drives within the next few years (I'm guessing 3-4).
Short rambling aside. Don't sit around waiting for solid state drives to make their spinning, magnetic brethren obsolete. These two technologies will exist side-by-side for at LEAST another decade. Why? Hard drives rely on more specialized technology that really only hard drive manufacturers and a hand full of physicists work on. Flash gets all the benefits of modern IC research, along with the reduction in dye sizes, etc that is constantly being reinvented. That means, a) the technology used in flash memory will top out 'sooner'. Sure that's in the distant future, BUT look at it this way: hard drive technology is still more viable even with all those resources benefiting this other technology. b) any truly novel approaches to form factor, like 3D storage, will eventually filter BACK to hard drive design. Remember that flash has already been pigeon-holed as portable and small. While that doesn't mean that it can't be made big and bulky, little research has been done on how exactly that will impact speeds and failure rates. Flash has the potential to be faster, but currently isn't. Bulky hard drives are much more acceptable. I dare say it, but I would not be surprised to see a return of the 5.25" hard drive. If I could buy a 5TB 5.25" hard drive right now for $50 more than a 1TB 3.5" I would jump at it in a heartbeat. Hell, there really is no reason why two sets of platters couldn't be merged into a single housing (a kind of like a fully motherboard agnostic RAID setup). So, short term - flash will show impressive density increases, long term - hard drives remain dominant. Either way, both will likely undergo major form factor changes within the next 5 years.
Other news: 64GB Solid state drive in ExpressCard format. Sweet.
Seagate has finally updated the Cheetah drives to a max of 450GB. This makes an excellent system drive, with 15k rpm and the fastest sustained rate available. The previous generation topped out at 137GB, and once 1TB drives hit, the speeds were no longer worth the price premium (and were generally beaten by mainstream drives). The current ones improve on the previous as much as 28%.
And last, I just got a 32GB flash drive. You should get one, too. $130 at NewEgg.
3) Engadget had some 'heads-on' time with the OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator. Imagine my surprise when they said, "The unit seemed to primarily concern itself with our forehead muscle contractions, but other subtle motions seemed to come out of nowhere when we moved our eyes or concentrated just right." *cough cough "80% muscle EMG, 17% eye EOG, and 3% neural EEG." cough cough*
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Another consumer BCI
The OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator, made by a mostly gaming RAM and peripheral company, is nearing completion and is set to become the first official consumer BCI. This is no Emotiv system, with only a few measly dry electrodes in a headband, but who freakin' knows? I have already placed a review request using my press creds, but will post the info here as well. The below German video is the best, I think. Watch the user's forehead twitch to control the system. There are a few others on YouTube.
The breakdown of signals will probably be something like 80% muscle EMG, 17% eye EOG, and 3% neural EEG. By that I mean the usefulness, since EMG will complete wash out any EEG and probably all EOG, depending on many factors. What will be interesting is trying to actually push the EEG portion. If/when I get ahold of one of these (I'll buy one if I have to), you can bet I'll be trying to hack the crap out of it (eventually. in the short term I'd like to see the waveforms, if the bundled software doesn't show them to you). The post here will be meant to compliment the Digital Trends post, which will focus on usability, with a more critical look at the science behind it.
Like always, there's that divide I talk about between what is really using neural signals to perform a useful action, and what is using some mesh of signals to perform a similar action in a more convenient package. The scientist side of me says, "Bah! What trash!" But the gadget geek side says, "Awesome! I want one!" Unfortunately, the gadget geek side always wins in issues concerning purchases.
Via Engadget
Official OCZ press release
The breakdown of signals will probably be something like 80% muscle EMG, 17% eye EOG, and 3% neural EEG. By that I mean the usefulness, since EMG will complete wash out any EEG and probably all EOG, depending on many factors. What will be interesting is trying to actually push the EEG portion. If/when I get ahold of one of these (I'll buy one if I have to), you can bet I'll be trying to hack the crap out of it (eventually. in the short term I'd like to see the waveforms, if the bundled software doesn't show them to you). The post here will be meant to compliment the Digital Trends post, which will focus on usability, with a more critical look at the science behind it.
Like always, there's that divide I talk about between what is really using neural signals to perform a useful action, and what is using some mesh of signals to perform a similar action in a more convenient package. The scientist side of me says, "Bah! What trash!" But the gadget geek side says, "Awesome! I want one!" Unfortunately, the gadget geek side always wins in issues concerning purchases.
Via Engadget
Official OCZ press release
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