Mindball

Mindball is a concept mentioned in a book I read in 2013 called Trying Not to Try. The game is usually played by two players. The players sit on either end of a table and a ball in the middle rolls away from the player who is more relaxed, focused, and meditative. If the ball reaches your end of the table, you lose.

  • Personal Project
  • EEG
  • Human Computer Interaction
  • Biofeedback
  • Design Challenge
  • I wanted to create a single player version of the game that included visual biofeedback, so that someone could play it alone as a way to train themselves to calm their mind. The ball starts away from the player and rolls towards them. The ball reaching the player gives a sense of achievement rather than anxiety.
  • Project Scope
  • This was a personal project, and I did all of the electrical hardware, mechanical design, and coding. The ball is a 2" steel ball that rides on a magnetic track driven by a stepper motor. The game receives EEG data from a MindWave Mobile over bluetooth, parses it, computes the game math and translates it into a color that the player sees, and if above a certain threshold, the ball moves towards the player (and away if below).
I've long been interested in "Brain Machine Interfaces" as the next frontier of human-computer interaction.

Consumer EEG sensors and chipsets have become cheap and accessible enough to use in experience design projects like this one.

See the Github
  • Target UserAnyone
  • Type of WorkElectronics, Coding, Interaction Design
  • Tools UsedArduino, NEMA motors, NeuroSky, NeoPixel
  • LocationCambridge, MA
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