Lucid Dreaming and the Edge of Consciousness
💡 Note: This was work created by my college self many many years ago. Republishing here.
A few years ago I first learned about lucid dreaming. After reading tons about them and all the techniques you can use to get them, I began getting lucid dreams very frequently. As you can imagine, I dreamt up some really cool experiences.
I began my adventure into the great world of Arduino and electronics in my quest to induce lucid dreams.
This ratnest of wires was my first prototype in the world of lucid dream induction. You had to sleep near an outlet for power, tuck a wii nunchuck under your pillow for motion tracking, and wear a hardwired mask that would blink red LED’s at you when it detected you were paralyzed… needless to say it wasn’t very comfortable. However, it did work! Once. Before it broke. Guess it wasn’t very durable either.
When I finally got a smartphone, I was amazed at how much better data you could attain. With really cool graphs and tons of developers working on great sleep tracking apps, I really wanted my mask to come to the modern age with me.
I scrapped my first prototype and began work on creating a new one. This time I created a wireless sleep mask that interfaced with my smartphone so it would know when to stimulate you into lucidity. Remember, overstimulation leads to tolerance.
The project worked fine for demos and testing but it was incredibly brittle. I knew I had to remake this in a less janky way if it was to survive even one night.
Designing a durable, fully featured sleep mask took me many tries. So many I put a banana for scale. Design after design, my project went from something from a horror movie to a functional product.
I finally had a stable prototype. One I could wear while sleeping, interface with my phone, and had all the features I wanted in a mask.
These light patterns are completely customizable through your smartphone.
Lucid dreaming masks are not surefire hits and I’m not a fan of how people sell them as though they are.
My goal with Project Lucidity is to make a sleep mask that truly works well, not simply sells well to the mass public. Thus, to improve the current state of Lucid dreaming and hopefully improve the research started by Dr. LaBerge in the 80’s, I will be open sourcing the whole project pretty soon!
Open sourcing a project might not seem like a lot of work but it really is. I would love it if you guys checked out my website and shared it, liked it, or tweeted about it. I want to create a network of enthusiasts working together to take the hit-or-miss nature of lucid dreaming and make a consistent experience for the larger crowd to enjoy.