Arguments for building multi-sensor EEG, ECG, MEG, etc. devices up to 32 channels by ourselves

Last Updated on August 4, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

We reviewed multi-sensor devices ECG, EEG and MEG devices since several years. These devices are expensive and have a small community of users. There are devices available from www.OpenBCI.com for 8 – to 16 channels, and from and from Emotiv for 32 channels. More affordable devices can be found on Aliexpress for 8 – 32 channels. But these modules from Chinese sellers start selling at a low price, where the prices for those where linked to the price for the single electronics components. We suppose that Chinese sellers tend to shoot up prices for those if they are used and adapt those to the prices of www.OpenBCI.com and Emotiv. But the community of users for those is small, especially for those bought from Chinese sellers. And we hardly know of YouTube video makers, students projects or scientific papers who uses those, and there seems to be hardly any developement visible. Are these devices an outdated concept?

The alternative is to build multi-sensor devices from single electronic components:

Build your own g.tec medical device with 32 EEG channels and InfluxDB

The costs are lower and prices more stable. Printed circuit board for those and a community of users who attaches those to contemporary software as MNE Python, HeartPy, Neurokit2, Home Assistant, InfluxDB, Grafana could make these more popular.