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

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The OpenBCI WIFI shield, it s Reality & it s Future

Posted bypg@petergamma.org

Last Updated on January 13, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

  • The most affordable version of OpenBCI is the cable version starting from 230 USD on Aliexpress
  • There are warnings about the dangerous OpenBCI cable version which can harm you:
The Tragedy of the OpenBCI Connectivity
  • but even professional EEG device developers like Adam Feuer who developed HackEEG use a cable connection to a Laptop, as shown in this example here:
https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/12/13/hackeeg-arduino-shield-reads-signals-from-your-brain-eeg-muscles-emg-and-heart-ekg/
  • simply disconnect your Laptop from the power to avoid electric shocks from the mains.
  • We can use the Bluetooth version of OpenBCI to connect OpenBCI to the OpenBCI GUI. The OpenBCI Bluetooth version is also available on Aliexpress. But Bluetooth transmission is slow, and if you are interested for instance fast Gamma brain waves, Bluetooth transmission might be a problem because of the slow speed of Bluetooth transmission. Also the Emotiv Epoc flex uses slow BLE transmission.
  • If we are interested in fast brain waves, WIFI transmission is our preferred choice. OpenBCI does currently not offer the OpenBCI Wifi shield, although it is a great device developed by computer Engineer AJ Keller, which offers many features, as for instance connecting the device as a web server, MQTT, or a RestAPI which is well documented, to connect directly to the WIFI shield, which does not require OpenBCI GUI.
  • There are OpenBCI supporters who claim that the OpenBCI WIFI shield is deprecated, but this is wrong. The OpenBCI WIFI shield was developed about five years ago by computer engineer AJ Keller, the demo he shows on YouTube where recorded five years ago by Keller:
Testers wanted for the new denoised and power improved version of the OpenBCI WIFI shield
  • The OpenBCI WIFI shield is currently not offered by OpenBCI, and we do not know if OpenBCI ever will offer it again, since it has reliability issues. But it can be bought an ebay and Aliexpress. It is possible to solve these reliablity issues by a hardware modification, which needs some soldering. It is described in the OpenBCI documention under issues of the WIFI shield on the GITHUB issues.
  • The OpenBCI WIFI shield is not deprecated, as some OpenBCI supporters claim, on the contrary. IT could have a bright future, if we want. Very expensive devices like g.tec medical engineering use WIFI tansmission in their devices, which costs 50 000 USD and more. Modifications of OpenBCI components could replace such expensive devices.
  • Some Aliexpress OpenBCI sellers offer an updated version of the WIFI shield which they say is denoised and power improved, which eventually solves the OpenBCI WIFI shield issues. But the updates version is hard to find on Aliexpress, and we do not of any OpenBCI users who confirm the claims of the Aliexpress sellers.
  • If we buy an updated power improved version of the WIFI shield, we risk that sellers send us an old version of the WIFI shield with issues. This is a trick to get rid of components which sooner or later no one will buy anymore, as soon as everybody knows that they have issues.
  • We were victims of such sellers who send us broken components over ebay from US or also on Aliexpress. Do these seller know, that that it is not worth to send these costs back, if there are sent to remote locations, because of the high shipping costs? Therefore be careful if you buy components like the OpenBCI WIFI shield on Ebay and on Aliexpress, and the seller claims that is an updated one. He might send you a device with issues, to get rid of it.
  • The OpenBCI WIFI shield is not deprecated, as OpenBCI supporter claim, on the contrary, it is our preferred choice, if we can get it to work reliably. It is developed by computer engineer A J Keller from Neurosity and it is a very contemporary component.
  • New software platforms as for instance InfluxDB might make the OpenBCI WIFI shield interesting as well. Several OpenBCI boards could be streamed over WIFI to InfluxDB, to replace expensive multi sensor devices which costs 10 000 of dollars. But this would require a hardware change of the OpenBCI.
  • If we are interested on the long term on hardware components like OpenBCI and the OpenBCI WIFI shield, it might be worth to study, if we can get the Gerber files of these devices and modify them ourselves.
  • We where victims of Google who modified Android in a way so that we want to replace our Android phone as soon as possible by a Linux phone. The Linux PinePhone demonstrates the advantages of devices which have an open source hardware. With the Pinephone, it is possible to run almost any Linux distro on it. This is not possible with Ubports phones, on which we flash a costum rom as a modification to the Android version of the phone. Skilled Pine64 developers made this possible, to develop a Linux phone, which is completely based on open source hardware.
  • It is hard to understand sometimes the enthusiasm phonephone uses have in their devices on YouTube. We suppose most of them are coders. And we suppose that their enthusiasms comes from the fact, that we can do anything they want with the Pinephone. Let us check, if we can also do everything we want with OpenBCI. Alexpress sellers claim, that they can develop stange modifications of OpenBCI with strange channel numbers on request. Can t we then not as well develop everything with OpenBCI or other components, to not be the victims again of soft- and hardware developers, who prevent us from realizing our full potential.