REM Detecting LED Goggle Device Nova Dreamer Wanna Be Thing

Holy crap!!! You guys actually succeded! I’ll be one of the first people to buy one, garunteed. Heck I’ll buy one now if possible(actually give me a week.)

‘Test’ doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t pay for them :smile:
Let me know if you decide to sell them!!

Dear dwax,

as I am currently building the mask from brindefalks homepage (kvasar) I would be interested wbout what´s wrong with his plans. Ii would be kidn of you to give me some hints as I don´t want to run into trouble later on. I have almost all parts available now and will prepare the perfboard asap. Also you were right, as the total costs fora all parts is not more than 15 EUR , including the part that you need to build a PIC programmer in order to program the 16F84.

best wishes,

tom

Does anyone know what sensor they use in the Nova Dreamer? I understand that it is an infra red, but what part is it?

Well, cookie,

I assume that similar to Brindefalks Kvasar they use an IR emitting diode the light of wich is detected bya photodiode being sensitive in the IR range (~900 nm). But I don´t understand what you want to do with that information if you have no clue about all the electronics behind it?

Or did you think it was a sensor that you could buy at Walmart and that you only had to clamp one or two LEDs to it to make it work? “Oh, mom, when you go shopping later on, could you please get me some cans of coke, crisps, some chocolate and … oh … yes… also one of these REM detecting IR sensors that they have on special offer at the moment?” lol

Best wishes,

Tom

Hehe yeah you are right about that. But I have some common knowledge and an interest in electronics and computing. I have a pretty good idea on how to build such a device - in theory. Im not planning to go buy parts and build one. At least not right now…

Anyway my guess would be what you said. The movement of the eyelid would (in theory) create minor changes in the intensity of the reflections of the light from the emitter. That could be measured by the sensor diode (in theory). But you need two parts that are compatible enought to give a strong enough signal to be detected by the onchip A/D on the microcontroller. Unless you want it to cost $50 just for the A/D.

I bet it would take lots of trial and error and testing of different setups (preferably with an occiloscope) to get it working in practice. OR you could just use the same setup as the Nova Dreamer, which is likely to work.

EDIT: By the way, my nickname and this account was just meant to be temporary. I didn’t think i would actually return and post stuff here months later :smile: Sorry if i confused anyone - im not a kid and im not always un-serious.

I’ll get a new name soon, cause i feel im going to be a regular visitor and poster.

Ok, I see.
But all that is not bare theory, as I built the novadreamer like device from brindefalks homepage. Please check here:

brindefalk.solarbotics.net/kvasar/kvasar.html

The only problem is now to program the PIc as the programmer I built doesn´t seem to work properly :sad:

Meanwhile I finished building a kind of Dreamflasher from a simple alarm clock and 2 LEDs as described elsewhere and I am going to test that tonight

Best,

Tom

this is the thread that got me thinking about the goggles dwax built. i e-mailed him a few days ago with no luck, maybe he’ll reply in the future, maybe not.

i was looking around for clocks with more than just one alarm (some have 6, which means if you can get the clock to stop the alarm after a few seconds, you can program the 6 at 90 min intervals)… the problem, again, with the alarm clock is the leds blinking till you get up and turn it off… which would mess up your LD cause you’d have to, well, wake up.

i’ll ask my dad (he’s good with electronics) if there is an easy alternative to the PIC microchip. if not i’ll see if i can get one of the programmers and maybe start from there…

if only dwax would come back and explain how he built his pair :smile:

as for the REM sensor

the chip used in the dreamweaver mask is an Optek sensor which seems to measure the distance between itself and the eyelid… when your eyes move, the distance changes more frequently which causes (in the dreamweaver’s case) the computer to react… that’s pretty cool, cause using the computer you can actually monitor your eye movement for a whole night and figure out exactly what the numbers are when you’re in REM…

but all this is beyond what i’m trying to figure out hehehe :cry: i just wanted a pair of goggles that flash at every 90 minutes or so…

i’m not giving up tho.

(ps: sorry for the long post)

That looks cool. I definetly have to build one :smile:. It’s a lot more simple than what i had in mind…

Im also planning to build a programmer, either for the PIC or for AVR and get started with some programming for it.

Which programmer did you build? I know that the parallel port in Windows XP does not alwasy work like it should. Can’t even get printers to work with it anymore :smile:

Edit: have you seen this? https://www.jdm.homepage.dk/newpic.htm

okay im prepared ot build the kvasar mask but i wondering if anyone has built it and it worked? I would only be moved to make this if there was positive feedback from someone that it worked for.
thanks heaps guys :smile:

i’m building one too… I have everything I need (except for one or two, including the IR Sensor) and I’ve already started putting it together.
For the IR Sensor i called Hamamatsu and a very very nice lady made an exception (they only ship to companies with a min 50$ purchase) for me and is now shipping me two “samples” of the S4810, free of charge :happy:

All i have to do now is finish putting it together and then wait for the sensor to get here (meanwhile i can build the programmer)… hehe, and to think a week ago i had NO IDEA of any of this. It’s really fun.

One question though… on the Kvasar diagram there are two lines going nowhere saying “com in” and “com out” (right side of PIC)… does anyone know what they are and where they go ? or do i just leave them untouched ?

so here’s stage one of the electronics :

i didn’t want to build it too small cause i’m not that great with the iron hehe, it’s already crazy enough with all the wires. it’s going pretty good and it’s tons of fun hehe (at least i find it fun)

Hi, just to let you know I’m going to build a kvasar mask. To tell the truth I’m not goint to build it by myself because I don’t know anything about electronics. A friend of mine will help me. Now I’m looking for the components but I’ve already some problems. I wrote to Bjorn some question. I’ll write down my questions, maybe someone in this forum can help me:

  1. I couldn’t find the photosensor, I found Siemens L51P3C.
  2. I’d like to have more information on the NPN transistors… is there something particular to look for, or could I get whatever NPN transistor?
  3. I couldn’t find PIC 16F84. In the shop they have only 16C84. Is it the
    same? Or shall I order the exact model?
    That’s all… I hope to have some answers so I can work on it this weekend…
    Let me know if you have any idea
    Bye, and good luck to you all

i found this regarding the PIC16F84 and PIC16C84: www4.tripnet.se/~glenn/16f84.html

Glad theres people building it, i may wait untill it is succesfully built before i attempt it myself…hope it works though

as soon as it’s done and i get a chance to test it out, i’ll be sure to make a small webpage with the building procedure from the eyes of a newbie and some results (maybe a journal of sorts).

right now i printed the plans for the pic programmer (took a while to decide which one i wanted to build hehehe)… and i’ll be getting the S4810 in the next two weeks (i should hope)… It’s being delivered as a sample, which I got free of charge from a very nice lady at Hamamatsu.

A while back there was a product called the dream mate(even looked like the nova dreamer) that suddenly went out of business. This thread has been around for a while but, I don’t know of anyone who has successfully built one yet. Must be hard to make. I do have a question though. If the devise does not have a REM detector would it not be simpler to hook up a strobe light to a timer? Just a thought. Good Luck. If any one succeeds I might buy one.

MeusOpusMagnus, good job! About the com in, com out on kvasar I believe that is a serial interface to connect to your computer via serial port to download information like REM patterns, etc. I am not sure if this is implemented. Very good job for a first prototype though! Once you get this working I guarantee you are going to want to build a smaller one :smile: I will try and post some pic’s of mine this weekend!

vinz, I buy my electronics from www.mouser.com They definitely have the 16F84.

mouser.com/index.cfm?handler … deid=57911

You DONT want the 16C84. The C means PROM that requires a UV eraser to erase, versus the F for FLASH (program multiple times, electrically erasable by your programmer). Also, as you can see on mouser the actual part # is PIC16F84-04P. The 04 is the processor speed (4 MHz) and the P is the package type, PDIP. You want PDIP, you don’t want SOIC, which is for surface mount.

Also it appears a standard NPN transistor will do the trick in the kvasar design. You can get these at any radioshack:

radioshack.com/product.asp?c … 276%2D1617

Also, to those of you building a PIC programmer, I highly recommend the one available here:

sparkfun.com/shop/index.php? … 636&cat=3&

It’s the PIC-PG2C product #. The programmer is $13 and works like a charm!

There are several components that are unnecessary for the KVASAR design.

1.) Pin 16. You do NOT need the 22pF capacitor and 4k resistor! PIC’s have internal oscillators that generate the clock for you. If you already bought them and have them in place it is okay though, but you will want to remove these when optimizing for size.

2.) All 1k resistors that are connected to the switches are not necessary! Most PIC’s (I didn’t check on this one) have internal pull-up resistors so you can remove these.

3.) You don’t need 2 150 ohm resistors on the eye LED’s. On my desigin I connected them like this, sorry in advance for the bad drawing:

IO1 ---------LED----|
----150-200 ohm resistor ---------GND
IO2 ---------LED----|

EDIT: Ahh I couldn’t figure out a good way to draw this, the board removes extra spaces, imagine the second line being spaced out to the | on the first and third lines. Sorry.

Eww, that’s ugly. But you get the point. I connect the cathode end of both LED’s to 1 150-200 ohm resistor which is then connected to ground.


Again these are all just suggestions and it will work as depicted in the schematic. Also for items 1 and 2 you will have to modify a control register so let me know if you don’t see it in the data sheet.

hey dwax :smile: thanks for the tips, i WAS thinking about building a much smaller one if this one works (i’m going out today to buy the parts needed for a small, simple pic programmer), so the hints you gave me are certainly going to come in handy.

i also e-mailed Bjorn Brindefalk and asked him about the com in/com out (he said they’re just for future development if needed) and if anyone was wondering about that big orangy-red component (lower left corner in the electronics picture on his website), it’s just a big push-button :smile: i couldn’t figure out what it was for the life of me.

i got your diagram, so far that takes away a whole bunch of resistors and the capacitor, and if i make the buttons the really small ones i should get a very compact design. I’ll go check the datasheet for the pic and see if i can find anything about that.

from Bjorn’s website, he’s also working on a more compact one.

Thank you very much for your help.