Music Hack Day 2013

The Music Hack Day 2013 in Barcelona included a special neuroscience track amiting at providing a set of useful tools and APIs to encourage hacks that bring together music, brain signals, Brain-Computer Interfaces, and other physiological sensors. Among other tools, hackers were provided with the e-Health board for Arduino and Raspberry Pi. The boards handed out to the hackers were equipped with three sensors: a GSR Sensor, a ECG Sensor, and a Nasal Airflow Sensor. In order to share captured signals and provide derived high-level measurements in real-time during the hack session, a server running SSI was installed and set up to process and stream signals through the network. We therefore used parts of the sensor platform developed in the EU funded CEEDS (The Collective Experience of Empathic Data Systems) project. The following chart gives an overview of the system architecture we developed together with our partners from the Research Center “E.Piaggio” at University of Pisa and the SPECS Lab at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona:

During the hack session our team was on site to give hackers support with sensors and signals. However, we found some free time to take part in the competition and develop an own application: an old school jump and run game called ‘BlowUp’. ‘BlowUp’ is steered with only physiological sensors and uses the eHealth board for Arduino to capture air flow and heart beat of the user. Signals are pre-processed and streamed through SSI and sent to the game. During the game the character has to avoid obstacles by jumping controlled through air flow, while its speed is adjusted to the heart of the user. If the heart rate increases the speed of the character goes up and the other way round.

Screenshots of the signal processing pipeline (top) and the gameplay (bottom):

User equipped with sensors during game play:

…and a video:

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