Last Updated on April 13, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org
Robert Oostenveld answered to our questions on his blog:
“Hi Peter,
I have not used the OpenBCI Cyton for a while, but specific problems which I recall and saw others struggle with include the following:
- The connectivity with the dongle is not so stable, sometimes requiring multiple attempts to connect, resetting the board, replugging the dongle, etc.
- The Cyton exposes a lot of details of the Ti-ASD1299 chip, which makes it difficult to make the right choice in configuring the board and hence increases the risk of a suboptimal or incorrect configuration.
- The technical documentation and design of the PCB has some errors (on SRB1/SRB2), which don’t matter if you only care about getting “some signal” but which cause polarity to be flipped.
- The wifi shield only works sporadically and hence cannot be relied on.
- The software ecosystem is rather spotty, there are multiple subprojects that are not functional and seem abandoned.
- This is not to say that I am complaining about the Cyton: it is not expensive, it is open hardware and source and it is possible with all open information to debug everything.
- However, I had expected or hoped that by now (after 9 years of its initial release) there would have been a version 2 of the Cyton board with improved usability.
- For me it felt that I was spending more time trying to debug than doing EEG, hence I moved on to other systems:
– the Ganglion (with lower SNR, fewer channels but more usable)
– and the Unicorn Black by g.tec medical (overall cheaper, more complete as a set, and
easier to use).
best,
Robert “
Developers welcome to resolve the mentioned issues with OpenBCI. Issues Robert Oostenveld mentioned on his blog, as well as issues we mentioned in our journal.