The first stages of the GSR hardware and software are now working and providing results. The data received is smoothed and displayed as a traditional analogue display and also as a digital readout. There's something quite rewarding about watching software react as you put the probes on your skin and then watching the needle pop when you moisten the skin.
Pic shows the response with wet fingers on the prototype version.
Obviously, there are problems testing the skin response on myself as I'm watching the meter. The real-time feedback of an analogue meter doesn't lend itself to easily seeing long term variations in the response. With this in mind I will start looking at adding a representation of a paper fed "polygraph" showing the previous 5-10 minutes or so in order to gauge the response over a longer period of time.
Next stages are to make it look nice, add a calibration button to set the client's base level response and start testing less invasive probes than the finger straps.
After a night of poking about with wiring and tweaking code, the first tests of a Galvanic Skin Response meter for windows/mac and linux are beginning to show fruit.
The basic concept is to take my existing GSR meter and run the results in real-time to the computer where it can be combined with camera footage, audio etc. to create a complete picture of the therapeutic process. An Arduino board has been selected for easy communication between the GSR circuit and the computer.
Current state of play has a standalone circuit which measure skin conductivity (+3v) and feeds the real time results to the computer where they are displayed as arbitrary scale. The next stage will be working on a few visualisations for displaying the data in a more user friendly method.
At present the system connects with the PC via usb although a bluetooth version is planned on completion of the first system.
