Last Updated on August 19, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
Has OpenBCI been used in scientific papers? Is it worth investing time in this platform, or is it an outdated concept, soon? OpenBCI has been used in 239 projects to this date, which are listed here:
- OpenBCI has not yet known to be outdated, newer platforms based for instance on InfluxDB are eventually a challenge for beginners.
- OpenBCI is affordable, it is open hardware and source and it is possible with all open information to debug everything.
- OpenBCI has some issues. But is it not a good thing to have a platform for which the issues are already known?
According to Robert Oostenveld for instance:
- The connectivity with the Bluetooth dongle is not so stable, sometimes requiring multiple attempts to connect, resetting the board, replugging the dongle. But we did not hear many complaints from many people about this topic. Can we live with this issue? If not, we can connect the OpenBCI boards over cable or WIFI.
- The technical documentation and the design of the Cyton PCB has some errors (on SRB1/SRB2), which don’t matter if we only care about getting “some signal” but which cause polarity to be flipped. This worries us a little bit, and we have to have a closer look at this. But we did not hear yet major complaints from many people about this issue which would have caused those to stop to use the OpenBCI Cyton.
If we want to take the challenge, we can build a physiological multi-sensor device based on InfluxDB with 3 ECG chips according to this instruction:
These are some issues and solutions we suggest for users who want to build a 3 lead ECG device.