Is OpenBCI necessary for our project, or are there also alternatives to OpenBCI?

Last Updated on January 12, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

The OpenBCI modules on Aliexpress vary strongly as for as their costs concern. The advantages of OpenBCI is, that OpenBCI can be connected to the OpenBCI GUI.

The OpenBCI products on Aliexpress are interesting for us personally. But if we realize that there is a marketing strategy behind it, to find out how much money can be made of us, out of students which do not have a lot of money, and out of other low-budget developers, we can do without OpenBCI.

We can use individual TGAM modules and can connect those over ESP32 to Home Assistant and InfluxDB. From there, we can do anything in Python. Currently, if we choose the most affordable OpenBCI modules on Aliexpress, setups with OpenBCI and individual EEG modules are comparable.

If we compare the cost of the OpenBCI modules on Aliexpress in the higher range, we can see that they cost much more than individual TGAM modules soldered together. If only the expensive modules remain on Aliexpress, since the others are sold out, it is a reason to change to individual TGAM modules.