Stream Your Brain into TouchDesigner: Neural Stream over OSC

Neural Stream is a dashboard-level feature in PiEEG Cloud that forwards your live headset to a creative-coding app as named OSC channels. A single TouchDesigner OSC In CHOP receives the entire brain — cognitive state, band powers, per-channel activity, and blink events — with no per-address wiring. The connection is direct P2P: after a one-time handshake, nothing routes through the cloud.

This guide takes you from a fresh browser to brain-reactive visuals in TouchDesigner.

What You'll Build

By the end you'll have TouchDesigner receiving a live CHOP where each channel is a named brain signal:

Drive anything with them — particle systems, geometry deformation, feedback loops, audio-reactive networks.

Prerequisites

No headset yet? You can still follow along — connect the dashboard to the demo server and Neural Stream will forward the synthesised signals exactly the same way.

Why It Works: OSC In CHOP + Named Addresses

TouchDesigner's OSC In CHOP creates one channel per unique OSC address it receives. Neural Stream sends addresses like /pieeg/focus and /pieeg/ch3/alpha, so the CHOP explodes the whole brain into channels automatically — you never wire an address by hand. Turn a signal group on in the dashboard and its channels simply appear in TouchDesigner.

Step 1 — Connect Your Headset to PiEEG Cloud

1. Open cloud.pieeg.com in a Chromium browser (Chrome or Edge).
2. Connect your device from the Session Lobby — enter your server URL, pair over BLE, or hit ▶ Use Demo Server to try it without hardware.
3. Confirm you see live waveforms scrolling in the dashboard.

Important — stop background throttling. Once you switch to TouchDesigner, the browser tab loses focus and Chromium throttles its background timers, collapsing your stream to ~2 fps. Launch the browser with the --disable-background-timer-throttling flag so the dashboard keeps streaming at full rate while it sits behind TouchDesigner:

# Windows
chrome.exe --disable-background-timer-throttling

# macOS
open -a "Google Chrome" --args --disable-background-timer-throttling

# Linux
google-chrome --disable-background-timer-throttling

For Edge, substitute msedge.exe (Windows) or "Microsoft Edge" (macOS). Close all existing browser windows first so the flag takes effect.

Step 2 — Launch the Local Bridge

Neural Stream never streams your data through the cloud. Instead it forwards frames to a tiny app on your own machine over a direct, encrypted P2P WebRTC channel.

1. Download and run the PiEEG Local Bridge for your OS (Windows, macOS Intel/Apple Silicon, or Linux).
2. On launch it displays a 6-character share code (e.g. A3K9M2).
3. In the dashboard header, click 🖥️ Local Bridge, type the code, and click Connect.
4. The status dot turns green when the direct channel is open.

Step 3 — Open Neural Stream

1. In the dashboard header, click 🧠 Neural Stream.
2. Pick TouchDesigner as the destination. This sets the address root to /pieeg and shows the port hint (default 7000).
3. Choose which signal groups to stream:

1. Set the rate (10–15 Hz is smooth for state signals; go higher for band envelopes). The panel shows a live parameter budget — the local link handles up to 128 channels comfortably.
2. Flip the master switch to Streaming. Leave the panel open — streaming stops automatically when it's closed.

Tip: Start with just Cognitive state on. Get four channels flowing into TouchDesigner first, then add groups once you see them arrive.

Step 4 — Receive It in TouchDesigner

1. In TouchDesigner, add an OSC In CHOP (Tab → CHOP → OSC In).
2. Set its Network Port to the port the Local Bridge is forwarding to — 7000 for the TouchDesigner preset.
3. Watch the channels populate: focus, relax, alpha, blink, and so on — each named after its OSC address.

If nothing appears, jump to Troubleshooting below.

Copy the address list. The Neural Stream panel has a Copy list button that exports every active address, so you can paste the exact channel names into a Rename or Select CHOP while patching.

Step 5 — Make Something React

A few starting points:

• Focus → bloom. Wire focus into a Level or Bloom TOP intensity for a glow that brightens as you concentrate.
• Alpha → calm palette. Map alpha to a Ramp / Lookup so relaxing shifts the whole scene's colour.
• Blink → burst. Feed blink into a Trigger CHOP, then into a particle Replicator or feedback pulse — every blink fires an effect.
• Per-channel → geometry. Route ch1/level … chN/level into Instance transforms so each electrode drives its own object.

Smooth incoming channels with a Filter or Lag CHOP before driving visuals — the signals are already lightly smoothed, but a little extra makes motion feel organic.

Troubleshooting

Beyond TouchDesigner

The same Neural Stream works with other OSC consumers — pick the matching destination in the panel:

• Max / MSP · Ableton — unpack with [udpreceive] → [OSC-route /pieeg].
• VRChat — drive avatar float parameters from your cognitive state.
• Custom — set your own address root for any OSC-aware tool.

That's it — your brain is now a live signal source in TouchDesigner. Build something that only exists while you're paying attention.