Animal Ears You Control With Your Mind

Now including LED kits and Special Edition MVP Panda ears

New Ears for Necomimi

Hot on the Press

FORBES: "Can you imagine wearing a sign that says, “This is how I feel!”

MAKE: "Without a doubt the next best thing to actually being a colorful furry animal"

DVICE: "Just imagine a world where everybody is wearing one of these things: yes, this needs to happen."

Imagine

Emoki ears are designed to draw people to come and speak with you, to initiate conversations and ignite new friendships. They're unbelievably fun, and you'll laugh with your friends as your ears react to your mood.

Whether you want to look sexy & bad-ass with the party-flavored ears, or cute, cuddly, & fun with the cartoonish-realistic ears, wearing Emoki can enhance your time at all sorts of social gatherings.

Product Lineup

Ears with LED Kit (Emoki Bear and Fox, or Necomimi Cat)

Limited Edition Bumble Bunny

Limited Edition MVP Panda

Ear Design

We are launching with fox, bear, and bunny ears with different foam shapes. For each animal type, you may choose from four different color combinations for a total of 12 unique, colorful ears to suit your style and personality. For each animal type, there are two “cartoonish-realistic” and two “party-flavored” styles. Some of the party-flavored styles are blacklight-reactive, including the green and white bunnies and the pink and orange foxes.

Each ear consists of a fur sleeve and a polyurethane foam insert. Fur sleeves are made of premium ultra-soft shag faux fur for the outer ear, and either soft minky cuddle fleece or holographic shiny spandex for the inner ear. Fur covers the foam, and the foam slips over and grips the servo motors on the Necomimi headset, which can be removed easily to change ears. Each ear foam was designed to be lightweight, flexible, and durable.

No animals were harmed in the making of these ears.

Headset Design 

NeuroSky manufactures the base Necomimi headset, which was conceived by Neurowear. They designed the core brainwave technology, along with the Attention and Meditation algorithms, and have been making EEG products since 2005. They work with a variety of partners, like Mattel and Toshiba, to create custom EEG solutions. Here are the components for Necomimi, which serves as the base headset:

• Stainless steel sensor – The sensor is dry, meaning that unlike medical EEG, no gel is needed in order to detect a signal. The sensor listens to the body’s analog biosignal and sends the raw data to a chip.
• Ear Clip – Acts as a ground and reference, listening to non-brainwave electricity as a comparison point.
• ThinkGear ASIC Module – contains the chip which filters out the electricity from the body and the ambient environment to hone in on the brainwaves. The chip focuses on brainwave data from 3-100 Hz (delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma waves), and then crunches the data into attention and meditation scores. Tested to be 96% accurate when compared to the gold standard for EEG.
• Battery Case – Holds 4 AAA batteries.
• Power Button – Press to turn on and off. A steady neon blue light indicates power, a blinking light means that batteries are low.
• Headband – Flexible to fit heads of all sizes, from small to large
• Adjustable Strap – helps keep the headset on, even when dancing! Can be removed. Not shown.

Extra Perks

To add a Black Emoki Shirt to any package, please donate an extra $20 per shirt. Will ask for your size in a survey after the campaign.

To add a pair of ears (no headset) to any package, please donate an extra $30 per pair. Will ask what animal and color you want in a survey after the campaign.

To add an LED kit to any package, please donate an extra $20 per kit. LED kits work with Emoki bear and fox, and Necomimi's cat ears. Will ask whether you want an Emoki or Necomimi-shaped LED kit in a survey after the campaign.

If you are interested in customizing your reward, or if you have any questions, please send us an email at info@emokiwear.com and we’ll get in touch right away.

At the end of the campaign, we will send out a survey where you can choose which ears you want, send your shipping info, and specify what shape LEDs you want. 

Black Emoki Tee

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Understanding the Ear Movement

• Ears perk up – Attentive – single-minded focus, surprise, attraction – beta wave dominance
• Ears droop down – Meditative – calm, relaxed, chill – alpha wave dominance
• Ears wiggle back & forth – In the Zone – peak performance, excitement, calm focus – high alpha & beta
• One ear up, one ear down – Calibrating – when turned on, the headset learns about the user

By turning inward, slowing thoughts down, or imagining the sensations of being underneath a waterfall, you can lower the ears. Honing your mind on a single thought, listening attentively, or concentrating on a physical sensation, will help you to drive up the ears. With practice, especially in a mirror, you’ll be able to have solid control over the ears. Advanced users will be able to get the ears to wiggle back in forth by tapping into a relaxed focus, like when DJing or being absorbed in painting.

Reading Your Emotions?! From Brainwaves to Moving Ears

1. The forehead sensor listens to the body’s electrical signal, like a microphone
2. The ear clip acts as a ground and reference, listening to non-brainwave body electricity
3. The brainwave chip takes both signals and filters out all the electrical noise from the body and the ambient environment, honing in on brainwaves from 3-100 Hz
4. The chip’s internal algorithms convert the brainwave data to attention and meditation scores
5. Depending on one’s attention and relaxation scores, the servo motors rotate and wiggle.

Safety

An Emoki headset does not send electricity or anything else into or through the body or brain. The headset simply listens, like a microphone, and is completely non-invasive. This is not a medical device. It is completely safe to use this device as often as you like.

From Kickstarter to Indiegogo

When we launched on Kickstarter, we had 3 foam shapes, one for each of the three animal types, bear, bunny, and fox. Our manufacturing partner quoted $8050 for the tooling for each animal type, which comes to $24150, and then there's the minimum order quantity, shipping, and a safety margin, so we chose $35,000 as our funding goal.

With a considerable amount of redesign, we've made one foam that fits all three animal types, and gotten a quote for $1500 for the mold from a more suitable manufacturer. $1500 + the new minimum order quantity and shipping yields a $3500 funding goal. Exceeding this goal will drastically help us achieve better margins so that we can create a thriving business from our initial project launch.

Where We're At

We’ve have all the ear prototypes completed, and we’re already wearing the prototypes out and showing them off in San Francisco and LA. NeuroSky already manufactures Necomimi headsets. We have a partner lined up to manufacture faux fur according to specific pantone colors and thread lengths, to cut and sew the fur, to package the products. Everything is completely lined up. Now we need your support to start the ear manufacturing process.

Emoki Team

Nick Hoffman is the President of Emoki. He is passionate about the evolution of human communication, brainwave tech, meditation, yoga.

Hannah Masius is the Project Director for Emoki. As an idea maven, cultural hacker, and free expression advocate, she led a career in event production and management before bringing life to Emoki.

Devon “Devo” Frohne is brand strategy and graphic design wizard with over ten years of experience, including work for Astro Games and Comedy Central. He is also co-founder at another stealth start-up and DJs under the name Vitamindevo.

Rachel McConnell is a maker of nearly anything as long as it is awesome. She is a founding member of two hackerspaces, a microtrustee of SF Awesome Foundation, and the former lead developer of Instructables.com. Aside from co-founding Emoki, she makes custom objects at DrShiny.com.

Tess Aquarium considers herself a Textiles Hacker; she loves to take things apart to see how they work and make them better. Her specialties include faux fur, spandex, and animal ears.

Thank you so much for supporting the launch of Emoki!

We would also like to give special thanks to those who have contributed in a major way to our project thus far: Tony Gaitatzis, Srikanth Basappa, Sean Connor, Nadya Lev, Sam Leabo, Eric Rasmussen, Dan Hull, Peter Friedman, Raven Le Faye, Alicia Marie Campbell, Lorenzo Diaz, Aleksandra Dubov, Emily Gardner, Gil Liebrecht, Justine Prior, Hemmie, Ellen Bry, and Brian Baugh.