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Over the last few months, my access to the Internet has been very restricted. I reverted to reading heavily. In particular, after a few iterations of selecting interesting web pages from Wikipedia.Org, I have more than 7000 web pages to read. I thought that I could read through the bulk of long pages with the aid of text-to-speech software. Unfortunately, I fall asleep while pages are being spoken. It is also difficult to pause. This isn't a huge productivity gain and it also leads to less rested sleep. It is fairly similar to sleeping with a radio switched on.

After bothering to implement a script which pipes text to espeak or similar, it seemed like a waste not to use this functionality. I wasn't sure what should be spoken but large quantities of text aren't received verbatim and are likely to be detrimental. Perhaps something in a loop would be more effective? Or timed? Ah! It is possible to make lucid dreaming hardware with a micro-controller and was one of many possible projects when my ability with micro-controllers improved. However, this project has now been reduced to a script for a laptop or desktop computer and the optional use of headphones. (Indeed, it appears that I've had the ability to do this for many years but only had the imputus due to lack of bandwidth leading to a huge backlog of text. If I had more bandwidth, I'd probably be listening to podcasts or similar.)

In my local makerspace, there were a few issues of Make magazine. One issue had instructions for making a lucid dream machine from sunglasses, a micro-controller, red LEDs and a momentary switch. Before going to sleep, wear the sunglasses with the micro-controller and push the switch. The micro-controller is programmed to do precisely nothing for four hours. It then blinks the LEDs a few times every five minutes. If a person is dreaming during one of these blinks, it may be interpreted within the dream as car brake lights or similar. After several incidences over many nights, this should be sufficient to prompt "Ah! I'm dreaming!" and in the long-term, this should be sufficient to bootstrap lucid dreaming without a micro-controller contraption. The micro-controller (or script) aids the relatively difficult first step of lucid dreaming.

The article in the magazine noted an unusual side-effect which is definitely worth repeating. I have not encountered this problem but it is entirely plausible. People using lucid dream aids are more likely to experience false awakenings and this greatly increases the chance of urinating during sleep. Apparently, this is worse among the type of people who keep a dream diary. Apparently, after a lucid dream, a person "wakes", writes in their dream journal, goes to bathroom, "wakes", writes in dream journal, goes to bathroom, "wakes", skips journal because urination becomes more urgent, goes to bathroom, "wakes", bathroom, and suchlike. This cycle can occur eight times or more and you only have fail a reality check once with a full bladder before waking in a urine soaked bed. Welcome to reality. Make sure that you note the incident in your dream journal.

With downsides noted, it is possible to obtain similar functionality with a small script to sequence text-to-speech messages. From experiences in dreams, I suspected this would be more effective than LEDs. One night, I fell asleep with 24 hour news on television. In the dream, I was in an attic with other people. I attempted to watch the television in the attic in the dream but the view was repeatedly obstructed by items in the attic or other people. Despite continual obstruction, I did not leave the attic. This was how a brain integrated an audio channel without its video channel. It could not fake the video channel nor mask the audio channel and so was in a situation where it required the presence of a plausible audio source without video. From this, I know that it is possible to convey more information than blinking LEDs - up to 100% fidelity with zero feedback. However, interpretation is extremely random.

The micro-controller design stays dormant for four hours. In Perl or similar this would be sleep 4*60*60. LED blink is replaced with echo "This is a test." | espeak or similar. I recommend that default rate of speech is slowed from the default. Despite this, I've found that framing errors occur with a repetitive prefix. For example, "Alert! Alert! Alert! Alert! This is a dream!" gets interpreted as "Lerta! Lerta! Lerta!" and the message is missed while you ponder "What's 'Lerta'?" This may be a semi-deliberate action from a brain which is attempting to hold together a coherent experience.

I mentioned my project to a friend. My friend suggested writing a phone app because accelorometers can be used to estimate a dream period. I may have further conversations with my friend because I have more ambitious plans. Said friend introduced me to the SCP Foundation, which is a mix of Cthulu mythos and a warehouse of artefacts; possibly inspired by a scene from an Indiana Jones film. My plan is to make stateful messages which can picked up at any point and prompt a dream narative akin to SCP: Containment Breach or Five Nights At Freddy's. You may ask "Are you insane? Deliberately inducing nightmares?" and I would answer "People watch horror films and play zombie games. Bang for buck, this may be much more effective." At the very least, it should be obvious that lucid dream software (or any closed source accelorometer app) should be inspected very thoroughly; in a manner which does not apply to other software.

Since mentioning the project to my friend, I've conducted four nights of testing. The first was a complete failure due to incorrect insertion of a headphone jack. The third night was unsuccessful due to timing being completely wrong. I suspect this experiment makes me more sensitive to auditory input from other sources. On the third night, I may have interpreted some drama among house-mates. However, making enquiries about events which may or may not have occurred may induce more drama.

The second night was quite good. In the dream, I was in my local makerspace despite it not looking like my local makerspace. After receiving one of the messages, I recall being slouched over a chair, with headphones around my neck, talking to a person in the dream about lucid dreaming software. There are numerous logical faults with this situation. Most significantly, if I hear a message from the software, it is because an instant of the software is running and the reason it is running is to provide auditory prompts while I am dreaming. The fourth night was a long science-fiction dream. At one point, I was Captain Janaway and Neelix told me that I looked ill. When I gained some notion that it was narative, the dream shifted to an office dream where the text-to-speech was interpreted as a hateful door entry system and therefore ignored. It then shifted to a scenario where a house-mate who creates drama was attacked by a giant with Thor's hammer.

Overall, I've made more progress in four nights than would be expected with blinking LEDs. Unfortunately, I may not have anything further to report on this topic for an extended period. Regardless, here is some example code which can be adapted:-

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Example Prompts For Lucid Dreaming
# (C)2018 The Consortium.
# 20180417 finish

# requires espeak to be installed.

$wait=3*60*60;
$rand=90;

$pre="Alert!";
@say=(
  'This is a dream.',
  'You are dreaming.',
  'This is not real.'
);

while(0==0) {
  sleep($wait+rand($rand));
  $wait=$wait/6+30;
  open(OUT,"| espeak -s 60");
  print OUT join(' ',$pre,$pre,$pre,$pre,$say[rand(scalar(@say))]),"\n";
  close(OUT);
}

Addendum 1: The micro-controller implementation may induce photo-sensitive epilepsy. Risk may be reduced by avoiding flashing sequences from 2Hz to 55Hz and only using LEDs which are either red, green or blue. Risk of epilepsy can be eliminated by using the audio implementation.