This is an ongoing project that I started in the COVID-19 lockdown period. During quarantine I meditated often to improve my mental health. But I often struggled to know whether I was making progress and increasing my ability to stay “in the zone” for longer periods of time. So I thought… why not build myself a tracker?
This Arduino-based prototype measures my brain waves and calculates how long my mental relaxation streaks are, allowing me to see my highest score of the day. The success metric I use to determine whether my meditation session is successful is how quiet and focused my mind is the rest of the day. I found that the longer, deeper and more consistently I meditate in the morning, the better my mind feels the rest of the time. Hence, I decided to use the length of time I manage to stay in a meditative state as a measure of my performance. This direct correlation might not be true for other people though as there are a lot of factors that come into play such as how long it takes one to “get in the zone” or the type of meditation.
My goal is to be able to meditate for 45 minutes straight. My plan is to find out what happens to myself and other people when using this device to reach my time goals and iterate further to adjust it. Stay tuned for updates!
Front Image Source: mindful.org
