Train your brain

train your brain!

Inspiration

In our daily lives we are surrounded by distractions and multitasking has become the way to go. In this context, we have almost lost the ability to concentrate. This affects even children, who now often need even medication in order to be able to concentrate in school. For these reasons, we find brain games like Train your Brain very relevant, because they are a fun way to practice concentration. Furthermore, a game like Train your Brain allows us not only to boost our ability to concentrate, but also to teach our brains to concentrate when we need it.

What it does

Four sensors, two on the forehead to take the measurements and another two in the earlobes, as reference bias, register the brainwaves of the person. In a first microcontroller, these measurements are transformed to values on a scale from 0 to 9. These values are then sequentially sent to a second microcontroller that lights a series of LEDs depending on the value. The more LEDs are lit, the more concentrated the person is. At the same time that the LEDs are lit, a motor makes an arrow rotate in an upward direction, to show the overall progression of the session.

How we built it

In order to put the game together, we used OpenBCI Interface and Hardware: Cyton board, OpenBCI USB Dongle. From Infineon we used the XMC4700 Relax Lite Kit, breadboard, LEDs and cables.

Challenges we ran into

The main issue we encountered was the transmission of the data obtained through the BCI both to the GUI and to the second microcontroller.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

We are very proud that we could solve our communication problem between microcontroller and GUI. Likewise, we are very proud that we wrote our own code for the servo motor and we did not need to use standard libraries.

What we learned

As the people in the team had different areas of expertise, the team work allowed everyone to learn something new from each other, from programming tricks to ways to wire LEDs on a pinboard.

What's next for Train your brain

As in many games and applications nowadays, the social part is an aspect that we would like to develop. Give the users the possibility to share their progress and their best scores with friends and challenge each other to a battle of concentration. The introduction of new concentration games is of course another key aspect in the future of Train your Brain .