Lucid Dreaming With Plastic Milk Cartons

milk-carton-mask-layoutBeing aware that oneself is in a dream can be a difficult moment to accomplish. But as [Rob] showed on his blog, monitoring the lucid experience once it happens doesn’t have to be costly. Instead, household items can be fashioned together to make a mask that senses REM sleep cycles. We were tipped off to the project by [Michael Paul Coder] who developed an algorithm to communicate inside a dream.

[Rob] cut up plastic milk cartons for this ‘DreamJacker’ project and attached a webcam to produce a simple way to detect eye movements. A standard game adapter with a triangular array of white LED’s was added to the plastic cover in order to provide the necessary illumination needed for the camera. After testing it out, he switched to red light to balance sensitivity issues. Another iteration later and [Rob] attempted to create hypnagogic imagery during the drowsiness state that occurs right before falling asleep. He did this by fitting a single tri-color LED that he scrapped from Christmas lights that were dumped on his street.

The mask is tied to the back of the head with shoelaces, and acts like an eye patch during Wake Back to Bed sessions (WBTB). The end result produces an eerie looking graph of eye twitching taken throughout the night. We would be interested confirming that this setup helps the user experience a lucid dream, so it might be time to make our own.

Since writing his post, [Rob] has since adapted a mouse for use inside the mask cup to integrate with the LucidScribe REM FIELD-mouse plugin developed by [Michael Paul Coder].

7 thoughts on “Lucid Dreaming With Plastic Milk Cartons

    1. Seriously dude, whatever small electronic things you might want, sometimes big stuff too. Just drive through a wealthy neighborhood and your bound to find it with some silly couple minute fix needed. If you catch them taking things out, older couples in particular usually have heavier things they want to get rid of but can’t move on their own. There’s a pizza place nearby that got an arcade machine that way, I helped repair it once before when their usual tech was out of state.

  1. Lucid dreaming can be achieved without any equipment support, and it’s very simple.

    You just ask yourself, many times a day, “Am I dreaming?”

    You do this so much that it becomes a minor habit. You repeat habits in your dreams and so sooner or later you ask yourself if you’re dreaming when you ARE dreaming… and you’ll realize it…

    You lose control quickly at first, but within 10 or so instances you get a handhold on it. Your control increases….. you’ve joined the subset of humans that enjoy lucid dreaming.

    You need NOTHING further than that explanation.

    Have fun. Be well.

      1. Try this for the next few nights: wake up at 4am for a bit, then when going back to sleep, pretend that you are typing or playing the piano on your mattress with the slightest finger movements for as long as you can until you fall asleep. Known as the FILD technique; finger induced lucid dream. Report back if that also doesn’t work for you.

  2. It would be epic if you made your own! Let me know if you do… there are a lot of things that can be done to increase your odds: drawing a contrasting triangle on the eyelid to help the algorithm pick up movements, playing background music throughout the session at half the volume of the audio tracks, waking up and starting the session after a few sleep cycles…

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