Last Updated on July 7, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
There are user reports that OpenBCI WIFI shields bought on Aliexpress or Ebay from China have issues. Www.OpenBCI.com does not sell the OpenBCI WIFI shield anymore since a long time, but it is or was available on Ebay and on Aliexpress from China. Some of these WIFI shields have issues, but the Chinese sellers has resolved these issues in some of their products.
Unfortunately, both WIFI shields with issues and WIFI shields without issues are sold from Chinese sellers, and it is not always clear which product is issue free, and which is not. Some of them are labeled as “power improved, updated, denoised or for research and developement”. The once which are not labeled that way might be WIFI shields with issues. We have discussed this in our journal under the tag “OpenBCI”. Www.OpenBCI.com does not sell an issue free OpenBCI WIFI shield and did not bring it back on the market to this date. This is a pity, is not the OpenBCI WIFI shield one of the greatest products of OpenBCI?
If you buy Chinese OpenBCI products you will not have support from www.OpenBCI.com. But if you do not need this support, you can buy these directly from China. Post your experience with Chinese products and their issues in the comments below, write your own blog and contact the seller. We experienced that these sellers made updates of their products if users report issues and react on user wishes and requests. But be careful with those Chinese sellers. We have reported about some negative experiences with those in our journal, but also about positive ones. They currently offer OpenBCI modules at a low prize, but the proper function of these modules needs to be tested an verified.