The Emotiv comes with a number of actuators, only two of which do not rely on the (currently) mandatory software for getting data from the headset, the Emotiv EPOC Control Panel.
The actuators that are not reliant on the Control Panel are those that express the physical state of the headset itself opposed to any data it may be otherwise processing. This would be the power light and the charging light. When the headset is turned on, the power light is blue. When the headset is charging from being plugged in, the charging light is red. These both rely on two sensors I forgot to mention in my previous post, the orange switch for turning on the headset and the socket for plugging in an adapter.
The other actuators for the Emotiv rely on the Control Panel. These are various states of emotion, head positioning, facial movements, predefined commands, and the connectivity status of each of the sixteen sensors.
The sixteen sensors will appear on the Control Panel under “Headset Setup” and are colored-in circles. Their color, ranging from red to green, expresses the connectivity of the sensor from bad to good. If the sensor’s circle is colored in black, that means there is no signal being received from that sensor.
There are, in the SDK version of the Control Panel, eleven actuators under, “Expressiv Suite.” These actuators rely completely on the movement of your face, which are blink, right wink, left wink, look right/left, raise brow, furrow brow, smile, clench, right smirk, left smirk, and laugh.
The “Affectiv Suite” of the Control Panel features six actuators, measuring exactly what they sound like they do: short-range engagement/boredom, short-range instantaneous excitement, short-range long term excitement, long-range engagement/boredom, long-range instantaneous excitement, and long-range long term excitement.
The “Cognitiv Suite” of the Control Panel assigns electrical signal patterns to premade variables after training the Control Panel to recognize said patterns.
Lastly, there is an option for mouse control in the Control Panel where, upon activation, the software takes the data from your headset’s actuator and applies it to the (x, y) position of your cursor on the screen.
Source (a bit outdated by the looks of it, but a good starting point)
