MindRider helmet tracks bike rides, brain waves [Crowdfunding]

The MindRider helmet doesn’t just protect you in a collision or fall on your bike, it also tracks your state of mind as you ride, and sends that data to your phone so you can look at it later. We previously covered the device here.

The idea is that by using built-in EEG sensors, the helmet can track how a rider feels and then indicate their mood, from calm to stressed, with an LED light on the front of the helmet. That data is also sent to your smartphone via Bluetooth and stored there. You can look at your ride on a map later and see where the ride stressed you out. This might be used to modify your bike route. Optionally, you can share it with your community to help with bike advocacy.

A MindRider ride through Prospect Park. Red is stressed. Green is calm.

The helmet is not cheap, however. The pre-order price for one on Kickstarter is $280. Since bicycle helmets should be replaced immediately in the event of any sort of fall where a rider’s head hits the ground, we asked the team if it were possible to move the electronics into a new helmet after an accident at a lower cost. Ilias Koen, one of the partners at the company behind MindRider, DuKode Studio, told us via email, “Yes, that is a possibility, moving the electronics to a new helmet. Nevertheless I have to comment, the price range is not that high. You will find helmets in that range in any bike store.”

With fewer than four days to go, the helmet-makers have raised only about $12,000 of their $200,000 goal.

DuKode Studio is based in Gowanus. It uses NeuroSky‘s biosensor technology to read the brain waves. The project is also one of Eyebeam’s Computational Fashion Research Initiatives. Another EEG project from Brooklyn was the OpenBCI platform, meant to serve as a building block for all kinds of brainwave-reading applications. We covered that project’s dramatic success on Kickstarter.