Development Tools

The **Development Tools** are the set of software tools and APIs for all NeuroSky Headsets ([[mindWavemobile|MindWave Mobile]], MindWave, and MindSet) that make it easy for developers to create innovative applications that interact with a user's mental state.  

To download the **Development Tools**, choose the target platform you would like to develop apps for:
  * [[http://store.neurosky.com/products/ios-developer-tools-4|iOS]]
  * [[http://store.neurosky.com/products/android-developer-tools-4|Android]]
  * [[http://store.neurosky.com/products/mac-developer-tools-4-0|Mac ]]
  * [[http://store.neurosky.com/products/pc-developer-tools-4-0|Windows ]]

On the **PC/Mac**, the Development Tools includes the following separate, independent APIs and interfaces:

  - [[thinkgear_connector_tgc|ThinkGear Connector]] runs in the background of your Windows or Mac OSX system, and manages your connections to your NeuroSky headsets, streaming the data to a standard TCP/IP sockets that can be read by the applications.
  - The **ThinkGear Communications Driver (TGCD)** is a shared library of functions with an easy-to-use but well-documented API which facilitates connecting to headsets and parsing the data streams.  By calling the TGCD functions in the TGCD, your application simply has to call one function to Connect(), and then repeatedly call functions to ReadPackets() and GetValue() to get data from any headset.  The TGCD is available as a .dll for Windows and Windows Mobile systems, and a .bundle for Mac OSX systems, which can be called directly from C/C++ code.  It includes Java (JNI) and C# wrappers to easily call the library functions from those languages.  Lastly, there is a version of the TGCD for J2ME platforms.  
  - The [[thinkgear_communications_protocol|ThinkGear Communication Protocol]] is a detailed low-level specifications of the NeuroSky headset's serial data stream. This protocol in conjunction with a Stream Parser Library facilitates the parsing and interpretation of the data stream (provided as ANSI C source code for easy portability).  By following the specs and the Stream Parser Library, virtually any platform that can read the serial data, whether a scripting languages down to a microprocessors, can obtain brainwave data from NeuroSky's headsets.