And just when you thought your own interests were obscure...

Knit me a new brain, would you?

http://harbaugh.uoregon.edu/Brain/

Forget the Star Wars Force Trainer, whose warranty you'd indubitably void within two weeks, and go straight for the Emotiv EPOC neuroheadset.  The headset uses 14 saline sensors to "to tune into electric signals produced by the brain to detect player thoughts, feelings and expressions and connects wirelessly to most PCs."

Costing $299 and shipping on 12/21/09, EPOC would make the perfect gift for your inner brain-user-interface development geek. The introductory version of their software development kit, SDKLite, is free.

"SDKLite is a suite of development tools for the creation and integration of applications that are fully compatible with the Emotiv EPOC consumer neuroheadset. To enable developers to start development immediately, SDKLite includes EmoComposer, a tool which emulates the output of the Emotiv EPOC headset and provides scripting functionality to simulate real-time detections."

So, technically, you wouldn't even need the headset, but what fun would that be?

Here's a vid with Marvin Freakin' Minsky doing a test drive:

While I'm drooling over Star Wars toys, I might as well include their wireless, brain-computer interfaced force toy for $99.99.

videos: http://www.unclemilton.com/starwarsscience/

product: Star Wars™ Science Force Trainer®

Manual control, Darth Vader "robotic" arm, for only $34.99.

Could be fun to replace those knobs with gears and servos.

Star Wars™ Science Darth Vader™ Robotic Arm

I hadn't realized that one had ever been built.

Extremely cool video at http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/

via Futurismic