Welcome to the assembly guide for the “Community Edition” of Puzzlebox Telekinesis. By following these instructions you should be able to build your own EEG headset using simple, common tools with only 10-15 minutes of effort. Once finished you’ll be ready to install software and begin Motor Imagery training for steering Brain-Computer Interface control of games, software, and other Puzzlebox products and projects.
1. Check the following parts are available:
Hardware
- OpenBCI 32-bit Board Kit (8-channel or 16 channel)
- OpenBCI USB adapter
- OpenBCI battery pack
- Header pin / touch proof electrode adapters
- Florida Research Instruments electrodes
- 18-inch lead wires (5+)
- Disposable / reusable dry electrodes (one per lead wire)
- Ag/AgCl ear clip electrodes (2)
- 18-inch lead wires (5+)
- Hard hat suspension replacement
- Adjustable boot straps (2+)
- 1.5″ – 2″ thick heavy stretch knit elastic (1’+)
- AA batteries (4)
- Intel Compute Stick
Tools (recommended)
- Cloth tape measure
- Craft hole-punch for cloth or leather
- Scissors suitable for cloth
- Needle nose pliers
- Phillips Screwdriver (micro)
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2. Begin by removing the ratchet suspension from the hard hat replacement headband. Often a brow comfort pad may be present which can also be optionally removed, depending on personal preference. |
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3. Next take the roll of thick heavy stretch knit elastic and cut one or more lengths of approximately 1 foot. |
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4. During fitting clips should be used to hold the elastic in place. In the spirit of entrepreneurship we have found the clips from actual bootstraps to be effective. The strap material can be removed as we will only use the clips. As long as the clips selected are sufficiently strong feel free to personalize your design. |
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5. Wrap the elastic tightly with the slack end facing out so it can be tightened further later. Stretch to fit to suit your head. Often any excess can be trimmed for a better overall appearance. Over time the elastic may stretch somewhat, but once your Telekinesis headset has been fully broken in you may wish to actually sew the ends to the elastic band. |
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6. Find the exact center of the elastic and use the hole punch tool to create a small opening to fit the electrode. This will become the “Cz” position which will pick up electrical signals from neurons firing when physical and imagined feet gestures are made by the user. It may be necessary to carefully trim the loose material from the hole with a pair of scissors. Take care not to make the hole any larger than necessary, it is always possible to make it bigger later. |
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7. Fit a dry electrode through the bottom of the hole in the elastic and lock it into place using the exposed metal clip from the lead wire. Take care to ensure the metal from the lead is directly touching the coating of the electrode and that the material from the elastic strap is not in the way. For the center “Cz” position you should use the yellow cable (assuming you have purchased and receive 8 total lead wires each of different colors). |
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8. Insert the opposite end of the electrode lead into the corresponding color-coded touch-proof adapter from the OpenBCI board kit. This would be a good time to connect all of the other leads as well, in order to keep track of the matching color order on the adapter cable. |
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9. Each of the color-coded cable should be connected in sequence on the lower set of pins (indicated by the number “2” following the label name). Start with the white lead to SRB2 (EEG reference) and grey to N1P2 (EEG channel 1), through brown on N8P2 (EEG channel 8) and black on BIAS (ground).
The meaning of these pins is available in more detail through OpenBCI’s own online documentation. For example: “The BIAS pin is similar to the ground pin of common EEG systems, but it uses destructive interference waveform techniques to eliminate the ‘common mode noise’ of all of the active channels.” and: “The SRB2 pin is the default ‘reference pin’ for your OpenBCI input channels.” |
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10. The simplest and easiest configuration for initial Motor Imagery testing is a Common Spatial Pattern (“CSP”) configuration centered around the central “Cz” point on the 10-20 scale. The chief benefit to this design is that the exact spacing does not need to be perfectly accurate as the average of the signals will be combined and analyzed during training.
More information is available here:
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11. Repeat steps 6, 7, and 8 for each electrode position according to the chart and color order in the image in step 10. If only 5 electrode leads are available then skip the outer-most positions (C3 in brown and C4 in purple).
Note that the grey electrode which would normally be used with EEG channel 1 has been set aside in this design to optionally be placed over the forehead at position FP1. This is for potential training against concentration and/or mental relaxation in combination with Motor Imagery and will be covered in a separate guide. The two Ag/AgCl ear clip electrodes should be connected to the black and white touch-proof adapters. Once complete the headband can be tested for a comfortable fit, with each electrode making good contact with the scalp. If necessary the clips can be loosened, and the elastic strap pulled tighter. Just be careful to tighten on both sides such that Cz remains in the exact center as this is the one position which matters most. |
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12. Finally attach the OpenBCI USB adapter to your Intel Compute Stick for remote processing of the EEG data stream via WiFi, LAN, or Cloud-hosted systems such as OpenViBE or Cloudbrain.
Of course an Intel Compute Stick is not strictly necessary if you wish to use a full-fledged Linux or Windows-based PC directly, but we find the hardware to be suitable for a minimum-viable, low-cost platform for collecting and sending the data upstream. Jérémy Frey in particular has published an excellent guide getting started using your OpenBCI-based “Community Edition” version of Telekinesis with OpenVibe. The signal acquisition server is the only component which needs to run on the Intel Compute Stick: |
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