Controlling Real World Objects From Your Lucid Dream For $15

[Kyle Fredericks] tipped us about his first electronics project, a cheap and smart sleep mask that uses a vibration sensor to detect rapid eye movements.

As some of you may know, REM sleep is the part where you dream the most vividly and actively. If some external stimulation (sound, movement) is sent to you at this moment, it may help you take control of your dream by becoming aware of it. If not, your brain will create dream scenarios that incorporate this stimulus.

The interesting part of the concept is that the vibration sensor calibrates itself at the stage 2 sleep, when no eye movement occurs. This later allows a very accurate detection of the REM sleep stage, triggering a shelf stereo. Secondary buttons are even included in the mask sides.

[Kyle Fredericks] went to great lengths to document every step of the project, making it a perfect first step to learn electronics for beginners out there.

11 thoughts on “Controlling Real World Objects From Your Lucid Dream For $15

    1. Just so we can get the right idea, are you dubious about the workings of this project or that it’s the builder’s first electronics project…or the price? I feel like any of these could be legitimate concerns. I’m just curious where the discussion begins.

  1. If you disrupt REM sleep you can really screw up someone mentally, having something like this deliver an electric shock to a restrained, sleeping prisoner would be a great form of torture, just saying.

  2. Well props to the guy. Apparently this is his first project and he did not know much before doing this.

    However I am very doubtful that this is going to be any accurate. To begin with, we don’t have that well defined and stable periods for sleep cycles. So the baseline vibration measurements might be quite off.

    1. No REM stage has been scientifically proven to be a deep sleep stage where dreams or nightmares begin. For some reason our minds blot out any memory of the bad dreams. However, just like he said, if someone could send you a signal when your eyes are REM’ing (rapid-eye-movement), you would consciously know you were in a dream. Then you could take that queue to do whatever you like. Try flying or getting that impossible date* with that person you have always liked but could never get to 1st base, etc. etc.

      *”Hey baby… come to Butthead…” – Beavis & Butthead

      This idea is not a bad one. Detecting REM is not easy. I would use some sort of EEG detector and put electrodes near the temples to detect the occipital muscle firing. However, a quick and dirty method might be a “dead-man’s switch”. When you fall off to sleep you drop or release the normally open switch in your hand activating some sleep research equipment. A good way to gently alert you is to put timed flasher LED’s in the mask. That will send you a message in dreamland that you are in fact in dreamland and not awake – as you may falsely think you are. That’s the way professional lucid dreaming equipment works.

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