Last Updated on February 12, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
William Croft from OpenBCI:
“The Wifi Shield has been ‘deprecated’ for some time. So it is not really supported or sold. The fact that this clone company is selling a version claimed to be ‘improved’, but not actually tested or confirmed — reflects on the motivations of such copying / cloning to undercut and profit off of others work.”
Can we speak of “clones” and “original” of an open source hardware and software product? Should an open source hardware and software product not be open for everyone to copy and clone? If not, can we speak of open source hardware and software? We do not know about good standards of open source hardware and software. Eventually the sellers of the new WIFI shield don t have these standards. But do others have these good standards, who look forum accounts if a posters posts critical posts which could bring the product and the development of open source software and hardware futher?
Other companies than www.OpenBCI.com sell improved versions of the OpenBCI shield. The label is for instance as improved, and they show graphs, where they tested and confirmed their shield. But unfortunately, their tests have not been confirmed by others to this date.
Is it wrong, that other companies sell OpenBCI products at a lower prize than OpenBCI? What should be wrong about it? It is only wrong if they not stick to good standards and label the products in way so that everyone know who did the work, and that it was open source hardware and software, and what are the conditions of this open source hardware and software.
Do the companies who sell OpenBCI components in other stores profit from the work of OpenBCI? Yest, but what is wrong to profit of the work of open source soft- and hardware developers, who developed their work to be open source hardware and software? It is only wrong if they do not label it according to the terms and conditions of the developer.
Is it wrong if a company sells many versions of the OpenBCI WIFI shield, if www.OpenBCI.com does not offer an OpenBCI WIFI shield since two years, altough OpenBCI chiefs say it is not given up, but post-poned? How long shall we wait for it? We are happy about companies who offer the OpenBCI WIFI shield. It is the only option we have, if www.OpenBCI.com does not offer it.
Currently we suppose that Neurosity Crown has the OpenBCI WFI shield integrated, and sells a device which uses it. And also OpenBCI Galea has WIFI supports, and we suppose that Galea uses the OpenBCI WIFI sield.
These great device developers, A.J. Keller, C. Russomano and Alex Castillo commented about the WIFI shield, and seem to use it. There are also instructions how to repair it. But www.OpenBCI.com seems not to mention this anymore. This makes us suffer. So we mention it here. Www.OpenBCI.com seem also not to support the repair of the WIFI shield. Is this because they do not sell it in their store, which we regret.
If someone wants to really get it to work, we think it should be possible. The instructions how to repair it where written be experienced device developers, and they should work.
We think that the OpenBCI WIFI shield is still one of the most interesting components of OpenBCI, since it was developed by computer scientist A.J. Keller. We can follow A.J. Keller that he was not happy with the current conectivity of OpenBCI.
We are also not happy about slow BLE transmission of EEG data, since we are interested in fast gamma waves.
But who offers EEG devices with WIFI support which costs up to 2000 USD, the range in which we are interested in?
Neurocity Crown, but the Neurocity Crown headband does not fit to our needs.
Www.OpenBCI.com does not offer it
Emotiv Epoc flex does not offer it. A 32 channel device with only slow BLE transmission. For whom is this interesting?
There is a 32 channel EEG board with WIFI on Aliexpress. But we need to code the interface first. And it has only a money back warranty of 75 days.
Regarding these arguments, the WIFI shield developed by computer scientist A. J. Keller which needs to be repaired by ourselves, and who do not know anyone who supports this. But instructions for it are available how to repair it. And do we really need a support for it?
The OpenBCI WIFI has a Rest API which is well documented by A.J. Keller, we suppose. And it is one of the most interesting connection possibilities, if we want to use InfluxDB. We can eventually connect the OpenBCI WIFI shield directly to InfluxDB, without further complicated LSL over BLE transmission or Python connectivity over the OpenBCI GUI, and we can do without Home Assistant for this purpose.
These are the views of amateurs in software and hardware development. But we did not find any better information than this one which we want to share here. We are not interested in soft- and hardware development for EEG devices, and in selling those.
We are interested in it that www.OpenBCI.com is developed further. But are we the only ones?