March of Progress
The INSPEC is a bedside smart camera that detects REM sleep by tracking eye movements in infrared video to trigger lucid dream cues.
I originally set out to develop a headband that can trigger audio cues when REM sleep is detected from various biofeedback sensors like EEG and EOG... but couldn't accurately distinguish between the spikes in the data caused by rhythmic breathing patterns and other sleep artifacts from the spikes caused by the electrical activity from rapid eye movement patterns.
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​The INSPEC was dreamed up as a tool to help debug these false-positive REM detection events and I started recording myself with a night-vision camera to supplement the sleep logs in order to see what was going on...
I could see REM sleep clear as day in the video recordings and eventually abandoned the EEG research in favor of using the advances in machine vision to develop an algorithm that detects REM sleep in real time from a video feed.​
2011-2015
Halograph FM (Frequency Monitor)
The first recordings were taken with an accelerometer wrapped in a headband that is sensitive enough to pick up the heartbeat while resting, with a resolution of 3660µg and a measurement range of ±5g (49 m/s2).
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LSDBase.org - 2011/09/10 - Tread Gently
For you tread on my dreams.
This is the first entry; a recording of my movements while asleep. The 2745 data points collected in the minute above show the onset of REM sleep. The start of a dream.
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Hackaday.com - 2012/06/20 - Communicating from inside your dreams
"Over the last few years, [Michael] has been working on the Lucid Scribe project, an online sleep research database to document lucid dreams. This project uses a combination of hardware and software to record rapid eye movements while sleeping. Not only is [Michael] able to get his computer to play music when he starts dreaming (thus allowing him to recognize he’s in a dream) [...].​
"According to the Lucid Scribe blog, [Michael] and other researchers in the Lucid Scribe project have developed motion-sensing hardware capable of detecting heartbeats. This equipment is also sensitive enough to detect the Rapid Eye Movements associated with dreaming. This hardware feeds data into the Lucid Scribe app and detects when [Michael] is dreaming."
2012-2015
Halograph EEG (Electroencephalograph)
I quickly upgraded to EEG to get more detailed data.
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LSDBase.org - 2012/08/08 - Brain Waves
NeuroSky was kind enough to send me a MindWave EEG headset and will be making Lucid Scribe available from their store!
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Hackaday.com - 2012/12/20 Modifying an EEG headset for lucid dreaming​​
"[Michael], [Tom], and a few other people on the Lucid Scribe Database project have been using off-the-shelf EEG equipment to invoke lucid dreaming. Yes, that’s where you take control of your dreams and become a god. This requires wearing an EEG setup while you sleep, and these products aren’t very comfortable sleeping wear. [Tom] decided to take apart a NeuroSky MindWave and turn it into something comfortable to wear all night."
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Hackaday.com - 2013/06/01 - Off the shelf EEG hardware records your dreams
"Over the past few years, we’ve seen [Michael]’s adventures in electronics and lucid dreaming. With commercial EEG hardware, [Michael] is able to [...] record his rhythmic blinking for data analysis when he wakes up. His project is called Lucid Scribe, and now it’s open to just about everyone – including brain experimenters with OpenEEG hardware.
"OpenEEG is a project that aims to reduce the cost of EEG hardware by providing the hardware, electrodes, software, and documentation to build your own EEG headset. It’s a great tool in the field of biofeedback, but [Michael] is going one step further; he’s busy writing an algorithm that will detect REM sleep and play an audio track while he’s in a dream state to trigger a lucid dream."
2015-2016
Halograph EOG (Electrooculograph)
I started recording my eyes with a night-vision camera in order to debug false-positive REM detection events from the headbands.
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Hackaday.com - 2015/12/07 - REM detection makes you boss of your dreams
"[Michael] has been working on projects involving lucid dreaming for a long time. The recurring problem with most projects of this nature, though, is that they often rely on some sort of headgear or other wearable which can be cumbersome to actually sleep with. He seems to have made some headway on that problem by replacing some of the offending equipment with a small camera that can detect eye movements just as well as other methods.
"The idea behind projects like this is that a piece of hardware detects when the user is in REM sleep, and activates some cue which alerts the sleeper to the fact that they’re dreaming (without waking them up). Then, the sleeper can take control of the dream. The new device uses a small camera that dangles in front of an eye, which is close enough to monitor the eye’s movement. It measures the amount of change between each frame, logs the movements throughout the night and plays audio tracks or triggers other hardware when eye movements are detected."
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2016-2019
Halovision EOG (Electrooculograph)
I found that the camera could also detect eye movements from the bedside table. And developed a smart-mirror prototype that no longer required a laptop for real-time REM detection. It ran on a raspberry pi with a monitor and the NoIR camera.
2019-2025
INSPEC Halovision Prototype
I set out to make a more economic and accessible version that could work with a smart phone, based on the smart-mirror edition. Milestones:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
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REM-detection algorithm ported to the firmware of the smart camera
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Android and iOS mobile app
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Bluetooth interface
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Sleep artifact filters
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Real-time video streaming
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Sleep logs with hypnograms
2026 and beyond
INSPEC Halovision
Now the real fun begins:​
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Research studies to determine what types of cognitive training and audio cues are most conducive to lucid dream induction
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REM-detection validation against research grade polysomnography in sleep labs
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Enhancements to the sleep quality indicators
