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.
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.
Well, where do I start? Here is some of what goes into this:
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.
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.
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.”
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?”
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?
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.”
1)There is no conection with the Lucidity Institute. TLI is working on their own new model.
As I understand it, EMG sensors don’t neccesarily need to be inserted into muscles – surface/skin contact is generally sufficient for such purposes.
Additionally, I wouldn’t be surprised (wild-assed guess, here) if it turned out to actually be a GSR (galvanic skin response) sensor, anyways.
I want you all to know that I’m here for you. I thought you wanted more features a newly designed more comfortable mask and such.
It seems you just want it cheaper even if I have to use rubber bands and paperclips to hold it together?
Just tell me what price point you really think is reasonable and features that it must have at that price. Remember the Nova Dreamers reliability was very bad and I’m trying to make it better. The technology right now is not 100%. Together we can better the technology. If I was designing a new laser or something like that it could be totally tested in the lab, but something like this needs to go thru iterations of testing on different people. I could try harder to keep the final cost down if this is the main thing you are looking for.
The concept of EMG was done away with when I saw how people were getting varied results with it. I decided to make the IR detection better. I twould be a lot easier if I could just have head electrodes going to an eeg ciruit then you can get a really good detection of REM but there would be too many issues with that and uncomfortable too.
As far as Lucidity Institute goes when the Nova Dreamer was unattainable by distributors about a year ago a was in communication with them thru Keelin. I wanted to help them with their manufacturing and distribution of their next generation nova Dreamer. We talked for about 8 months then in October of 2004 they had a meeting and decided to just do their conferences and not deal with the Nova Dreamer anymore due to being shorthanded at the Institute.
I knew there was a need for a device like this and set out as fast as possible to provide it. This technology has never been 100% it’s still a work in progress - let’s get something together everyone will like - for both price and features.
The biggest problem I have with it (at this time) is, as you pointed out, the price. Unless it works flawlessly ensuring lucid dreams once a day or two days (or something extraordinary like this) I probably will never be able/want to cough up the money for it.
At this point the features don’t matter if it costs as much as it does (unless, like I said, it works almost every time). If it works “Ok” or “pretty good” like it seems to now, it’d only be worth putting about a hundred or so dollars in to.
Basically: I would say, either make it work great/flawless, or lower the price of it.
It is still an absurd price and if you read the previous posts, people claim that they ordered one and never received their dream maker and had problems getting refunds.
First of all, hello Bruce and welcome to the forum, nice to have you here! I’d like to put my ideas on your mask here based on what I heared so far, perhaps it might be useful to you.
Ok, so this is a nice test. 50% of subjects got at least one LD during 2 weeks! But according to me (and probably many others here on the forum), if you would put together another group of these students, who dont know anything about LDing, and you would teach them certain well known methods to induce LD’s (like WBTB + MILD, which works for a lot of starters very quickly!), my bet is that you could get at least the same result. Granted, one would have to put real effort into it, but this effort would be well worth the result and would not cost anyone 400 dollar (if that is really the price, I would never spend such a huge amount on such a device).
My conclusion sofar would be (and I dont want to offend you personally, this is aimed purely at the product and price), that your tool is a nice gadget for rich people who are too lazy to invest serious effort into learning to expand their nightly endeavours, or for those who wish to try and test a gadget besides their current induction techniques, that might (or might not) help them to gain lucidity and are willing to pay big time for it. Also it might be helpful for people who lack the time to LD seriously, perhaps fot those with a bizzy job schedule and not a lot of sleep. I could see how this could be useful to such people if you were to keep working on the dream maker to make it even more succesful.
I cant say I tested the product enough, but when I was having a lucid on my own, there were no triggers, lights or alarm. I dont think facial twitching, and eye flutters(opening/closing) are reliable. Why only one sensor. Why not 2 one for each eye, where is the logic in that. I agree in this product was not tested enough. I like the business that bruce is in, I think he’s doing a great job. This is in my opion but I think Bruce saw a great opportunity to get into this Lucid market since the Nova Dreamer is around 600+. But the product was rushed (even by the consumer) because everyone wanted one.
I think everyone has to find out what works for them. I’ve had better luck using my Luma 10 at 4 am and playing a lucid induction CD, but that just works for me!
I’d definately be willing to give something like this a try. I used to want a Nova Dreamer but they have since become so scarce and expensive that I’ve abandonded that idea altogether.
Like I said I’d gladly try this and report my results. I’m the kinda guy who’s dreams frequently are influenced by outside sensory input, so I have a feeling that this’d work well for me. As for the price, hey, I can always sell it if it doesn’t work. At least I’ll have tried it.
I think that was a sarcastic and exaggerated comment in an effort to justify your high price! No one here wants you to give the thing away for free but, you make an obscene profit on each sale. You know it and so do we. Like someone said, the technology for the dream maker is cheap and people could build one for $20.00 if they have even minor knowledge in electronics. So how do you justify $400.00 per unit.(I also understand that your price is going up to $1000.00 after this trial release).
