Last Updated on February 16, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org
If we look at the EEG devices we currently find on the market:
| device | Number of EEG channels | price (USD) | availablity |
| OpenBCI made in China, cable version | 4 | 230 | yes |
| Muse 2 | 4 | 300 | yes |
| PiEEG 4 channel | 4 | 325 | no |
| PiEEG 8 channel | 8 | 450 | no |
| Ganglion sold from www.OpenBCI.com | 4 | 500 | yes |
| Cyton sold from www.OpenBCI.com | 8 | 1000 | yes |
| … | |||
| g.tec multi-purpose device | 32 | 50 000 | yes |
Are the prices for these devices somehow linked to each other? And is it then not a marketing trust? Marketing trusts are forbidden in Switzerland:
- Marketing trusts harm competition, harm the market for EEG devices and make those less interesting for users and damages those.
- We can see that PiEEG with 4 and 8 channel was offered for less than the Ganglion sold by www.OpenBCI.com, but unfortunately it was only a limited offer. If these devices would be still on the marked, we had a competitor to devices from www.openBCI.com, which cost less. But they already have been pulled from the market, even before PiEEG with 8 channels has been released. But why?
Because www.OpenBCI.com wanted to get rid of this competitors and is part of a marketing trust?
- There is a instruction how to build your own PiEEG device:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/hackerbci/pieeg/updates/how-to-make-your-own-measurement-hat
- How much does it cost to build such a device? Are they the same as when PiEEG was first offered?
- Or are the prices for PiEEG now higher when we build it by ourselves?
- Or does it now cost 1 000 USD for 8 channels as the Cyton from www.OpenBCI.com? So that there is an alternative to the OpenBCI Ganglion from www.OpenBCI.com which is not developed? For instance OpenBCI GIU is not yet connected to it. Therefore it is difficult to use for beginners. So is it offered in that way, so that developers can use it, and www.OpenBCI.com can take it into their shop as soon as it is developed? If this is so, we will not take part in this procedure and develop devices for www.OpenBCI.com.
- Or does PiEEG following the example of Dreem2, which firt was offered for 500 USD, but then was pulled from the market for private users, and then was offered to scientists like us for 1 400 USD, before Dreem inc. went bancrupt?
If so, is now history repeating what happened to the Dreem 2 with PiEEG? If all of this is true, we will look as soon as possible for an alternative for PiEEG which is based on single electronics components and InfluxDB.