The company Neurowear is working diligently to breakout EEG (Electroencephalography) technology to the mainstream. You’ve seen their attempt to describe your mood with wagging kitty ears, and now they’re giving your moods a shot at choosing your music for you. This new experience of letting your subconscious pick tunes for you is called “music serendipity,” according to its makers. The device, called Mico, consists of a pair of headphones and an iPhone app.
The current prototype (supposedly one of only two in existence) is made of headphones so big, they look loud. The 3D printed modules contain controls for arrays of LEDs that indicate your mood and Bluetooth that connects to iPhone. The headphones also include an EEG sensor that touches your forehead but could be confused by a microphone that’s been rotated up. An external battery pack is also used on this prototype.
The EEG sensor reads your brainwaves, granted you are not moving a lot and your hair is out of the way, and sends what it detects to your phone. Once your mood is analyzed, it is categorized under focused, sleepy or stressed and the app plays a song to suit. The array of LEDs on the headset indicates your mood so that annoying co-worker has no excuse for not knowing you are stressed. These may be very general mood categories but it is certainly useful to be aware of which one you are leaning towards. Once you are finally alone again and you don’t feel stressed anymore, a quick shake of the phone will tell the Mico app to reassess your mood.
The prototype app only has a bank of 100 songs to recommend to you but possible partnerships with services like Spotify or Pandora could be available when Mico is ready for production. A Neuroware representative said that in the future an entire library of songs that are “neuro-tagged” could be available.
No official date on when we might see it in stores, Neuroware simply says in the near future. The device made its debut at SXSW 2013. There, they had a Mico headset that only included the EEG sensor and it played appropriate songs through a stereo. Imagine a subconscious DJ keeping the party bumping and focused.
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