Peter Gamma (Physiologist & Director) Meditation Research Institute Switzerland (MRIS)

099. Known issues of OpenBCI products which are not sold by www.OpenBCI.com

  1. Issues with OpenBCI WIFI shields
  • The OpenBCI WIFI shield is not sold by www.OpenBCI.com anymore, but it is sold on eBay and Aliexpress.
  • At least one user (Stellarpower) reported to have issues with packet loss and cyclic noise spiking with those.
  • Alwayswearshats made intensive tests about it until he got it working:

https://openbci.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/2108/measured-shield-regulated-3-3v-supply-has-6v-dip-at-1-second-intervals-with-resonant-ringing

  • Shirley summarized this in the www.OpenBCI.com forum on November 2020 as follows:

2. No support for OpenBCI products in the www.OpenBCI.com which are not bought from www.OpenBCI.com

  • Stellar Power had issues with the OpenBCI WIFI shield and asked for help in the www.OpenBCI.com forum

https://openbci.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/3502/cyton-wifi-packet-loss-noise-issues

  • Stellarpower was not able to resolve this issues. But it is nown since a long time how to do this:
  • Did the supporters in the www.OpenBCI.com forum not know about these instruction?

3. Jenelson had communication problems between OpenBCI Cyton and the WIFI shield

https://openbci.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/19681#Comment_19681

  • He was not able to resolve this problem, altough he is a very experienced developer

According to what we know now, it is possible to bring OpenBCI products which are not sold by www.OpenBCI.com to work. But we have to ask ourselves. Is it worth to invest this much time in it. And sending back those to China if have issues often is not worth it due to high shipping costs.

4. The first alternative is to buy products from www.OpenBCI.com

  • From which many say they are expensive
  • We suppose that they are tested which makes those expensive
  • And the OpenBCI products sold on eBay and Aliexpress are not tested

5. The second alternative is to build our own device based on this instruction:

Many say that products from www.OpenBCI.com are expensive. And to debug products which ware sold on eBay and Aliexpress takes a lot of time. So we have to ask ourselves, is it not easier to build a new device from scratch which is based on single electronics components and InfluxDB. Easier than to use OpenBCI products which are based on the ADS1299 EEG chip from Texas Instruments which is 10 years old. An architecture which does not fit very well to modern software platforms which are based on InfluxDB.