A project on Kickstarter has been making the rounds today. Apparently a group of kids have managed to hook up an iPhone 4S to an Arduino board and then figured out how to control Siri with their mind — their mind — using ECG pads on their noggins and hooking it up to a 3.5mm headset jack on the iPhone 4S to send the mind bullets directly to the phone, via an iRig I might add.
I sat here, watched the four sample videos, and thought to myself “whoa, that’s pretty cool,” just like everyone else. Then it dawned on me — this just feels outright fake. It’s almost like they’re taking a page right out of the viral video playbook.
Take a look at this screeshot:
Does it look like the SpeakJet chip is actually wired up to anything? Anything at all? I’m no electrical engineer, but I have taken a couple of courses in college that let me prototype and breadboard a couple of fun little projects during lab time, so I’m fairly confident when I say that the chip is connected to absolutely nothing. Zip. Trust me. I tried to fake my way through a lab or two of my own.
Don’t believe it. In their own words, “it’s a little bit sketchy.” I wonder if the Project Black Mirror team is sitting there, laughing at all the journalists who they duped into publishing this video as fact. Moral of the story: Tech journalists aren’t engineers, even if they do try to play one on the Internet.
Via: TipB, 9to5Mac, and IntoMobile
FLICKR
YOUTUBE
RSS
Smoke & Mirrors, very poor try to BS people.
1.
Do not believe, it a total hoax they are using a solderless breadboard and
have the 20pin chip & TO220 package on the board with only 1 red wire?
2.
Look at the breadboard and they have the 20 pin IC plugged in so that the side 1-10 cannot even connect to anything, no wires?
3.
The board with the USB has a VDC input connector with nothing connected where does the power come from?
4.
If you look at the IC mounted on the solderless breadboard, if you have ever used one in
your life you will know what I mean. The pins on the IC are all shorted out on the buss as
it runs right and left in rows either side of the center groove in the board.
There are also pins that are in free air at the center groove in the board, and many other
things that are impossible.
I am sure there are more things I can pick out if watched a few times but its not needed
and is a waste of time!
With over 30 years of electronic engineering experience and this gave me laugh tonight :)
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeThank you for posting this! I'm Trevor Coleman, one of the founders and COO of Interaxon, a thought-controlled computing company in Toronto, Canada.
This is 100% a hoax designed to mislead the media.
I've written a blog post about exactly how I know this, and also about why it's important that people know it's a hoax on our blog: http://interaxon.ca/blog/2011/11/why-the-brainwavesiri-hack-is-a-hoax-and-why-it%E2%80%99s-important-that-you-know/
If you had any questions about it, or want to know anything else about brainwaves, shoot me an email at trevor@interaxon.ca. I love talking about this stuff!
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeAlso if you notice from the video the phone Josh called from came up as Siri Test on his friends phone, which could be an indication of a something. In this case I guess we will just have to wait and see.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeI agree and in fact pointed out the SpeakJet issue yesterday on several boards.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeIt's surprising how many people missed that. Some people's kids... I tell ya!
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeI like the flashing lights. Makes it look like it is actually doing something. Sorta like a Star Trek prop.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeHaha, maybe they're trying to recreate their own reality distortion field.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Like