Do EEG device manufacturers have the goal that we can use certain EEG devices only for fun and in our spare time and for writing papers we need to buy expensive EEG devices?

Last Updated on April 3, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

Altough these devices could eventually easily be used also for research applications. Why should they not be used for this purpose? Because there are EEG manufacturers, who want this? So that they can sell us their expensive devices?

Since several years we are evaluating EEG devices. The trend of the world is, that soft- and hardware prices trop. But is this the case also for EEG devices?

Since several years, we where interested in the question, if low cost high quality EEG devices can also be used for research applications.

But was stroke us, is that most of the investigations which where made by scientists which went in this direction, that these projects where only published on their personal website:

1. Alexandre Barachand, Muse LSL

• Alexandre wrote us, that he hacked the Bluetooth stack together with a friend for fun and in his spare time over the week-end.

1. Irene VIGUÉ-GUIX. OpenBCI LSL

• She made a demo about OpenBCI LSL, but only on her personal website.
• Did she receive a demo device, with the condition to use it only for private projects?

1. Athanasios Koutras, Brainflow with Raspberry Pi

• Was this a paid demo?

• He uses OpenBCI Ganglion and Cython with Brainflow, but he did not publish this test in a scientific paper, but on medium
• was also this a free demo of a manufacturer with the condition to use it only for private projects?

The future of OpenBCI: will projects as the one from Athanasios Koutras replace g.tec medical EEG devices?

4. Unicorn Black tested by Robert Oostenveld

• Was this also a free demo device?
• Where the condition to use it only for private projects?
• Oostervelds review was only published on his blog, but not in a scientific paper, altough it was very professional, why?

5. Neurosity Crown developed by A.J. Keller and Alex Castillo

– A. J. Keller is a skilled computer scientst who developed the OpenBCI WIFI shield

– The WIFI shield still has issues, but was never repaired

• There are instructions available how to repair the OpenBCI WIFI shield, but we have to do it by ourselves, which is time consuming
• The Neurosity Crown device has WIFI support and an SDK
• But the device is a sort of a Muse headband with 8 channels
• There is no option to connect an EEG cap

Are all of these EEG devices part of an EEG trust, so that it is necessary for every feature we need more to buy a device which is more expensive, which priliminary serves business scientists to make more money out of it?

• An exeption was Arnaud Delorme’s Muse 1 LSL wich was based on the Muse SDK, which we where really happy about it. But shortly after that, the Muse SDK was pulled from the market.
• The expeption of Arnaud Delorme, who was also a victim of Interaxon who pulled the SDK from the market. He had already a Muse 1 LSL example which worked, which could eventually be used for writing papers.
• We where also victims on the EEVBLOG. Posters complained about us, that it is a failure, that we where always looking for inexpensive EEG devices. Why should this be a failure?

Did these scientists receive devices from the manufacturers to test this these devices, but only for fun and in their spare time over the week-end, to show, that these devices can only be used for this purpose? If so, it is time to debug OpenBCI, clone the documentation, and test it for scientific purposes, so that the prices for research grade EEG devices trop.