The BIG DreamMaker topic

Quest for Lucidity
35

Thanks, milod789. Sounds like good ideas.

The Wellness Tools FAQ says that they only ship by UPS because the mail is “to unpredictable at times” (to avoid the jurisdiction of the Postal Inspector, no doubt). Do you have any information that they have shipped something by US Mail?

In any case, they are engaging in interstate commerce, which puts them under federal jurisdiction. Guess the Feds are too busy chasing terrorists to worry about one small-time con man.

Maybe I’m naive, but I really didn’t know that people like Bruce Gelerter existed, and were able to function right out in the open. He’s a totally shameless liar and will say anthing. He tells people what they want to hear and knows exactly how to play the system. Every few years he moves to a different state and starts a new “business”.

If anybody has doubts, just Google for his name and see what pops up.

I just looked at the web site, and thought it looked legit. It should have been a tip off that he wouldn’t ship by mail, that the “order tracking link” on his website does not exist, and that his phone number wouldn’t accept a call with caller ID blocked.

Also, I think Stephen LaBerge holds at least one patent on the Novadreamer, which the “Dream Maker” as described on the website would probably infringe.

BTW, no one has ever seen even a picture of the “DreamMaker”. If it exists, why dosen’t Gelerter put a picture of it on his web site?

What really gets me are the spam posts he make to diabetes support groups–they are really apalling. Nothing worse than a quack who sells worthless medical device to sick people.

Nick,

Ask Gelerter to explain why Wellness Tools has a rating of “UNSATISFACTORY” from the Southern Colorado Better Business Bureau (coloradosprings.bbb.org click on “Company Reports” and type in “Wellness Tools”).

It’s a safe bet that for every person who complained to the BBB, there must be five who just said “ah, screw it!” and did a chargeback.

BTW, remember that you only have 60 days from the first statement on which the charge appears to do a chargeback for a “billing error”.
After that, you’re only remedy will be to sue and then try to collect a judgement from Gelerter (who filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy in 2003).

36

here is a working link to the BBB report on wellness tools. For some reason yours did not work.

Also it is worth a shot to complain to the news media like: shame on you or help me Howard. Write to reporters who investigate consumer fraud cases.

37

thanks, I’ll mail him this afternoon !

(btw, I payed through paypall, but how should I ask a chargeback ? :silent:)

38

Orion 12, I did get my Dream Maker.

After some very un-successful testing it’s for sale on Ebay. IMO, facial tension shouldnt be the only matter for detecting REM. I was actually having a lucid on my own wearing the thing, and I had set the brightness to the highest level and audio alarm and there were no triggers. I tested with new batteries as well. If you put the mask on and switch “4” to ON. You should be able keep your eyes close and move them from left to right and it should trigger. Only eye fluttering (where the eye actually opens) it appears to trigger. I don’t want to knock the product, it may work for others just fine. If someone has better results they should post here; this is all my personal opinion!

I dont know much about Bruce. He did answer the phone most times when I called and delivered around the time he said he would, so I felt he was honsest.

My 2 Cents
:help:

39

Please do not confuse Wellnesstools.com and Toolsforwellness.com they are completely different. Toolsforwellness.com doesnt have any negative ratings!

Thanks!
phoen+

40

Well, I dont want to BASH the product, but in my period of testing, I didnt feel that REM was getting detected. The ad says it added Facial Movments (i.e twitching) and REM detection. I turned of switch 4 (this removes the 40min delay) and put the mask on. I kept my eyes close then moved them around and around back and forth and no queue. However, it will pick up “Eye Fluttering”, (open and closing of the eyes very fast). I was actually having a lucid on my own (wearing the mask) and in the dream I saw nothing (no cues that would possibly be lights, and NO sound (I turned on the alarm). All this is in my testing and my opinion and – I am interested in hearing other reviews.

From the AD:
So what we did was to add another way to detect REM. It turns out that Electromyography (EMG) which measures facial tension is another good way to determine REM. By combining these two methods as we have done, increases the reliable detection of REM.

In short, I dont think facial twitching alone will let you know your dreaming. And why did he put ONE sensor when you have TWO eyes? That doesnt make sense either. I ended up selling it because it didnt meet my satisfaction.

Bummer!
:cry:

41

It didnt detect REM sleep at all during the night?

How many times did you try it?

42

About 5 nights I think. Which wasnt long, and other users could have better results.

43

Are you sure it didn’t give any cues? Is it possible to see the amount of cues it has sent after you wake up? I don’t know anything about Dream Maker, but in my experience NovaDreamer detects REM well, and gives cues, but I only know that because it remembers the amount of cues and you can look it up in the morning. And there have been a lot of cues but I just didn’t notice it in my dreams. Lucidity Institute explicitely says one must train himself to recognize the cues, because they often appear in your dreams in a very distorted form. I guess this is also true for Dream Maker. I hope the company that sells Dream Maker warn about this in the manuals etc? BTW I don’t really get what they gain by adding measuring facial tension, the existing method of detecting REM as used by NovaDreamer works well in my experience.

44

Well I could have tested this longer, but the thing that did it for me was I also set the Alarm to trigger as well. I was having a lucid and was looking for the lights in someway shape or form but nothing. I wasnt hearing any alarm either. I woke up instantly and the mask was quiet as a whistle. I think he should have used the like the Nova Dreamer. I dont think the facial tension is a good way of measuring either.

:eek:

45

electromyography doesn’t necessarily mean face twitching… the medical tests involve pinning needles into the muscle and observing the electricity INSIDE the muscle… i don’t think you’d have needles stuck in your face as you seep, so don’t trust this extra feature of the mask… i might be a non-believer, but it looks to me like big words for nothing… you may have electrodes on the face, but those would measure electricity across the skin, so it’s not EMG… it’s electrodermal (which is different, but may also work) or you may have some sort of “flexibility” measuring device that measures how much the mask moves during sleep, but this is useless since the mask could move for other reasons than muscle activity… yeah, i don’t see how you could have this on a mask, it doesn’t make much sense. So unless it’s electrodermal then I don’t think the mask has the extra feature… and if it IS electrodermal, i’d be worried… how can someone produce a mask that claims to use a medical monitoring method and not know how it works or even the right terminology…

as for the eye movement, it would seem the sensor isn’t properly aligned to your eye… you can probably try to play around with the intensity of IR (if you have the option) but other than that there’s not much you can do (unless you start moving the sensors around). this is what happened with my Kvasar, it picked up eye fluttering very well (even the number of flutters) but not eye movement… you can try playing with the way you put the mask on, but other than that there’s not much you can do…

i’m sorry about the negativity in the post, but i really REALLY don’t trust that guy… there’s no pictures, no mentioning of the product on the lucidity page… yeah… not so sure… it’s probably some low-end clone.

you might want to get your money back if possible… if not, dump it on e-bay and either buy a nova dreamer (which at least we KNOW is half decent from all these people owning one) or just wait for new products to be made by trustworthy people.

46

Wow, thanks for that info. I already sold it on Ebay and got my money back as well. I’m already waiting on my Luma 10 to show up. This of course is a regular mind machine, but I’m excited to do some great chill sessions. It uses the LightWeave technology where the lights are always on, smooth transitions. With your eyes closed, I hear it almost produces the ganzfeld effect and the patterns are amazing. I’ll keep the board posted to see how I like it.

:peek:

47

My name is Bruce Gelerter I designed DreamMaker and would like to share and answer questions as to the design considerations on detection of REM and how many variables that need to be balanced.

Also to answer any questions and get suggestions.
I really want this to be an advance in technology which I believe it is and will be better with feedback from the LD community.

One change that was suggested was to use different color LEDs instead of just red because when doing a reality check you know if you look left it’s Blue for example and then right might be green. I think it will help prevent accomodation where it won’t show up in your dreams after awhile.

48

First of all, I’d like to comment on how great this is to have someone actually listening to the community for actual imput on their product. Communicating actively with the consumer base is probably the most productive thing you can do when designing a product.

I have to ask though (with full respect) - What makes this little peice of hardware SO EXPENSIVE? I’ve seen an online tutorial where you can literally make your own one of these out of a printer cable, some leds, and a pair of sunglasses.

If these were something like 50-100 bucks a peice I’m sure they would sell amazingly fast (ultimately being cost affective). Is there a real reason for the outrageos price? I myself would consider atleast trying it if they were atleast reasonably priced.

49

Well, where do I start? Here is some of what goes into this:

  1. The masks are made by a professional seemstress company - custom using $12/yard fabric
    but that’s nothing compared to the foam in the mask. it’s called ultrasoft and is rarely in stock and is ordered custom. The foam comes in Buns - you have to buy at least two for a toal of $20,000 <- That is just for foam Buns! Circuit boards are run in large numbers to keep long term costs down. Then there is contract manufacturing costs to put the parts in the board.
    And on and on… There is a saying - you gotta be there to see there. Anyway you get the idea.
    Plus design hours you don’t know.
    Cost of parts on the PCB approx $15 other costs associated with manufacture and distribution A LOT!
    ALso I hired out for a technical writer/ Lucid Dreamer Pro to write the workbook $1500 but worth it. I started the design in October of '04 then I was up till 3am almost everynight until the end of February to get it out the door. Then the first seemstress had like a nervous breakdown and started just throwing things around her place - it was a scarey scene, but had to get another fast. this is what the major delay was.
    Anyway there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. And costs you would not think of that’s more than the parts you see.
  2. Ive been getting some really cool emails from all diferent Lucid Dreaming backgrounds and I’m really getting excited about what this Lucid Dreaming thing really is. I’m building some ELF (Extreme Low Frequency) equipment to help a college student with his research and thesis. And started to see some really intersting cross corelations with dreaming in general. Such as when your drifting deeper to sleep and your brainwaves slow down more and more they are finding that dreams start at the crossing of 7.83Hz Schuman Resonance. I believe that the universal concousness or the one mind that we share is at this frequency. So it’s possible that dreams are the minds interpretation of the actual plugging in to the universal and receiving images from other minds alive or past away. I will post an article eventually based ont he data I currently have it looks quite possible.
    Here is the thing - We can make the best tool for exploring Lucid Dreaming if we work together. I am going to setup a yahoo group for discussion.
50

How much time did you guys actually spend testing this? It seems (to me) that you guys might’ve got more caught up in getting the product out the door as fast as possible than actually working on making it the best you could’ve.

I can see how it would cost some money putting it together in the first place, but it sounds like the final product is (on a consumer level) not worth buying.

I’m not saying “Ooh, your company mad the mask cost too much”, but I am advising you to look at the situation from our view point. “I can either buy this dreamMaker mask for almost 400 bucks, or I can make my own for 20.”

51

DreamMaker was tested the best it could be in the short life it has had so far. I was lucky enough to have 20 high school kids available to try the new design before it was shipped. These kids new nothing about Lucid Dreaming and that was what I wanted. They really didn’t know what to expect so the data I got back was very good. Over 50% had some form of Lucid Dream within 2 weeks without practicing cues during the day. One of them told me,“I was siting in my kitchen doing my homework and on the table was one of those misting fountains with colored lights. When i looked up from my work I noticed the lights in the fountain were unusually bright and strange. When i put my attention on it i was transported to a room with Dreammaker Masks all over and nobody around. I saw swirls of color on the walls and this is when I realized I was dreaming.”

At first there were too many triggers and I needed to turn down the sensitivity. Then there is a variable I call “field selectivity”. If the infrared led is set to a “narrow beam” then contrast is increased and detection gets better, BUT only if the narrow beam is located directly on the eyelid. I have been finding that Left/right eye seperation on various people are quite different so it is hard to say “the eyelid should be right here” So then to accomodate the difference in peoples facial geometery the IR beam needed to be made wider instead of narrower. Which meant the sensitivity needed to be increased and so on - a lot of variables that you can only make a best guess on by averaging responses from a number of people. I expected to do upgrades after the release. I did have a good starting point, that of the Nova Dreamer design, then go from there. If you knew there was a degree of error in detection would you choose to error on the side of less more reliable triggers or more triggers - knowing a lot of them would be false? It’s a tricky situation. there is only so much testing you can do in the lab - then it needs to go out to the people for feedback.
Here is a challenge for you - you go and spend that $20 on making your own and i will be willing to bet that you would see quickly how big the task of making a reliable Lucid Dream Mask really is. To me it’s almost like saying “I saw the schematics for the space shuttle in popular science I can make that for under a thousand bucks. Why does Nasa spend so much?”

52

" I expected to do upgrades after the release. "

That, solely, is why I would’nt want to buy one of these. Would I be getting a good deal if I bought something for 400 bucks that still had problems/had some “guessed” features and additions?

https://community.ld4all.com/t/the-world-cheapest-lucid-dream-goggles-this-is-a-reality/8737

https://community.ld4all.com/t/the-cheapest-easiest-to-build-dream-goggles-ever/12747

53

This thread struck a chord in my memory, so I did a (very quick) search, and found this thread.
[url]The BIG DreamMaker topic]

Were the issues raised here ever dealt with satisfactorily?
If not, I personally would be rather leery of ordering the product.

54

There are now photos and more information about DreamMaker on site www.wellnesstools.com.
They wrote that DreamMaker has not EMG. They change their mind, that EMG is good to REM detection.
“We tried using EMG but the results varied too much from person to person.”

Altar