[Chip Audette] owns (at least) two gadgets: one of those remote control helium-filled flying shark (an Air Swimmer), and an OpenBCI EEG system that can read brain waves and feed the data to a PC. Given that information, it can hardly surprise you that [Chip] decided to control his flying fish with his brain.

Before you get too excited, you have to (like [Chip]) alter your expectations. While an EEG has a lot of information, your direct thoughts are (probably) not readable. However, certain actions create easily identifiable patterns in the EEG data. In particular, closing your eyes creates a strong 10Hz signal across the back of the head.

To control the fish, [Chip] wired up the stock remote with an Arduino. The problem was that although the remote has five different actions, [Chip] could only easily detect eyes being closed. OpenBCI lets you read different people’s EEGs on different channels, so [Chip] wired up four friends and now it takes five people to completely control the Jaws’ brother.

We’ve talked about OpenBCI before along with a tear down of another EEG device, the Muse headset. We just hope [Chip] is prepared for the obvious “jumping the shark” comments.