How to Hack Toy EEGs. Arturo Vidich, Sofy Yuditskaya, and I needed a way to read brains for our Mental Block project last fall.
After looking at the options, we decided that hacking a toy EEG would be the cheapest / fastest way to get the data we wanted. Here’s how we did it. Chipstein. DIY EEG (and ECG) Circuit. CAUTION: I highly suggest doing this on a laptop, because there is a danger involved if there's a spike in voltage from the wall outlet.
Regardless, BE VERY CAREFUL WITH THE PROBES GOING TO THE SOUND CARD. If they accidentally touch a high voltage source (i.e. you stick them into a power outlet), you can fry your computer's sound card. First thing to do is to download Processing, available at It doesn't require any installation; just unzip the download, open the folder, and run it. Download the sketch (what programs are called in processing), and open it up.