The invention concerns an EEG based activation system that may be used to turn an appliance ON or OFF. EEG signals have been used for control purposes using biofeedback methods. However, the drawbacks of this are the learning time required by a subject which may take days or months. The present invention provides a simplified EEG based system for activation of an appliance. The system has an input port to receive electrical signals from scalp electrodes (2, 3), an amplifier (5) to amplify the signals, a bandpass filter (6) to filter the signals and a signal averager (8) to smooth out the signals. Furthermore, the signal averager integrates any received signal in the passband of the filter and provides a ramping output, and the integrating time constant being between one and five seconds.