Thread: Muse S headband (for REM-detection in custom LD-induction app)

A few years ago, I made this thread about using the original Muse headband to detect REM-sleep and trigger sound/light effects: https://www.dreamviews.com/lucid-aid...etty-good.html

However, I eventually stopped working on it, mainly because the original Muse headband was not very comfortable (or stable) to wear for extended periods (eg. overnight).

Fast forward to the start of this year, and Muse has released a new device which is much more suitable for overnight use: the Muse S. (Commercial links aren't allowed, but you can find info on it by searching for "Muse S".)

Excited by this new version, I purchased one, and have been working for a couple weeks on producing a system which can reliably detect REM-sleep from the device's EEG data.

Here is my roadmap:
1) I spent a good week or so researching the field of machine learning. This took longer than I expected, because there are tons of different machine-learning algorithms and approaches out there -- and having no experience in the field, it took a long time to find the appropriate ones to use for this use-case.
2) I then spent a couple days recording raw EEG data of sessions with different eye-movement amounts (none, micro, and macro), and storing that data with those labels, for training the machine-learning model.
3) I trained the machine-learning model, fiddling with its parameters until I seemed to be getting reliable matching between the model's predictions (for each raw eeg-data "session") and the sessions' labels/"targets". (with splitting between training and testing data, to mitigate over-fitting)
4) I then spent some time getting the (outdated) Muse SDK to work with their latest Muse S device.
5) To-do: Finish hooking up the live-streaming EEG data with the machine-learning model.
6) To-do: Experiment with when and how to use the detected eye-movement to trigger the various alarms in my app (sound, wifi light, and bed-shaker alarm).
7) To-do: Once I get things working nicely for me, clean up the app's user-interface, and get it all packaged and released on the Play store so others can also try it.

So far, I've only been posting about my work on the French lucid dreaming forum "Attrape Songes", due to their having a more active geek/"hacker" subforum atm: Le coin des Geeks
(early testing: [Test] SmartLucider banner)
(mirror of this thread: here)

However, today I've decided to start posting here on DreamViews as well, since it's getting close to the point where I'll be using it nightly to try to induce lucid dreams.

Speaking of which, what is the general approach I'm going to try for lucid-dream inductions? Basically, my idea is to have eye-movements (for longer than a few seconds) gradually increase the intensity of various alarms. Eventually, the alarms will become intense enough to wake me (especially the bed-shaker alarm -- that one works quite well). However, the alarms are set to instantly stop as soon as the eye-movements stop.

So the idea is that as soon as I awake, I'll stop moving my eyes -- causing instant alarm shutoff. And because I just noticed the alarms be disabled, I can know for sure that I had been dreaming just seconds earlier -- and at the start of REM -- so I'm then in the prime time to perform DEILD and/or WILD attempts. Because the turning off of the alarm was instant and automatic, the hope is that I'll still be close enough to the boundary of sleep, to relatively-easily slip back into the dream, with my awareness intact.

I've heard of some people who have had success with this sort of approach, but I don't yet know how effective it is in general. But hopefully by using a commercially-available headset like this, we can have multiple people attempt it -- without having to rely on guesswork as to when the REM segments are occurring, as for some timer-based approaches in the past. (however, I wouldn't recommend buying the Muse S until I've done substantial testing with this approach myself -- as the device is fairly expensive and I don't want you wasting money until I can see if (and how much) it actually helps )

As this gives a good summary of the project, I'll end this first post here -- filling in more details in the responses to come.

Wish me luck!
-Venryx

P.S. By the way, shout-out to Sebastii for his email to me a few weeks ago! I wouldn't have started this project reboot (this early anyway) if he hadn't messaged me, prompting me to take a closer look at the Muse S, and reigniting my interest in the subject.