The alternative to these Chinese modules which have lead to negative feedback are expensive products from www.openbci.com. And the second alternative are products based on InfluxDB:
To summarize: basically none of the affordable alternatives to products from www.openbci.com
seem to work out of the box. And it is not clear if it is possible at all to repair what does not work.
Basically only products from www.openbci.com work out of the box, but are expensive. The OpenBCI modules made in China should in principle be repairable. But we do not know of a community who does or did it. Nor whould the OpenBCI modules made in Chine have become better in recent years. To resolve the issues described here requires adanced knowledge about the OpenBCI soft- and hardware, as well as advanced soft- and hardware skills.
Looking at all of these arguments the question arrises if it is not better to start a new project from scratch which is based on InfluxDB, and look in a university library as this one for it:
https://infozentrum.ethz.ch/en
The projects based on InfluxDB are much more advanced. Since years we are reviewing OpenBCI products and affordable OpenBCI alternatives. But we are walking circles and stand basically where we started several years ago. So to start a new project based on InfluxDB seems to be much more promising than using the 10 year old OpenBCI architecture which does not show much life anymore.