Last Updated on April 4, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
Read our journal about EEG devices and OpenBCI under the mentioned tags and categories. After you have read this, do you think these devices are worth the money for which they are sold under www.OpenBCI.com ? Is Robert Oostenveld right, if he wants to sell us the Unicorn Black as “overall cheaper” than OpenBCI? You can find sellers which offer OpenBCI modules at a quarter of the price the OpenBCI Cython modules have in the www.OpenBCI.com store, and also at a quarter of the price of the Unicorn Black by g.tec medical.
Why are OpenBCI modules sold by www.OpenBCI.com so expensive? Is this because these modules are fabricated in the US? And is this because www.OpenBCI.com charges for the support on these modules? William Croft from www.OpenBCI.com says that www.OpenBCI.com has only an income from selling OpenBCI modules. Is this the reason that prices for components from www.OpenBCI.com stay so high? And is another reason, that there is too little competition in the EEG device market?
The trend of the world is that prices for soft- and hardware trops, but this is not the case for products sold by www.OpenBCI.com. www.OpenBCI.com has a support forum, we usually are locked out of this support forum. Is this because we are interested in “prix garantie” products?
Who is not interested in “prix garantie” products? www.OpenBCI.com . But who else is not interested in such products? OpenBCI users who want to buy low cost high quality OpenBCI modules at the price William Croft sells those to them, can buy them from www.OpenBCI.com . For other users, there are other stores which sell OpenBCI products, some of them at a quarter of the price William Croft sells them to us. www.OpenBCI.com might argue that www.OpenBCI.com products are supported. If you nee this support, buy components from www.OpenBCI.com.
We ask the question, has the 1000 USD Unicorn Black by g.tec medical official support by g.tec medical? The only sign we can see on the Unicorn Black website which is from g.tec medical is a little copyright mark at the bottom of the website. There is a contact form, but we do not trust the contact forms anymore. We made bad experiences with those. You can find all the resources for the Unicorn Black at their web site. Is there more support than this from https://www.unicorn-bi.com? We strongly doubt about this.
If we look at the prices for instance for 32 channel g.tec medical devices:
They cost more than 50 000 USD. Will g.tec medical support a 1000 USD Unicorn Black? We strongly doubt about this. The hardware costs for these devices are not very high, as our comparison table at the link above shows. What is expensive is support from people at the university level which are highly qualified for this. But are you a bit skilled with electronic components, soft- and hardware, and know how to deal with those at the level of a Scott Harden, PhD. MD? Then you can save a lot of money. You can find OpenBCI components at a quarter of the price as those which are sold by www.OpenBCI.com.
Why then should Scott Harden’s buy from www.OpenBCI.com ? OpenBCI has a lot of issues:
But after we have written 220 pages about OpenBCI in our journal, we are convinced that these issues can be resolved. And also Robert Oostenveld writes that:
“he does not say that he is complaining about OpenBCI Cyton: it is not expensive, it is open hardware and source and it is possible with all open information to debug everything.” (see on the previous page in this journal)
We are convinced about this as well. And if these modules are debugged by people like Scott Harden, and people who are interested in those on the long-term, we do not see a reason why not to use OpenBCI also in the future. And if they are debugged and updated with contemporary Python software and InfluxDB, is there anything to complain about OpenBCI components?
Maybe we can complain about the fact, that not all the EEG devices in the world are built from OpenBCI components and InfluxDB, and we can complain that the fact, that not all EEG devices in the world are sold for prices which can be compared to the prices at which the most competitive OpenBCI modules are sold. But we are convinced, that as soon as InfluxDB becomes easier to handle and is more widely used for physiological multi-sensor devices, prices for those will drop dramatically, if development is done for fun and in spare time over the week-end by Scott Hardens. And we are convinced that sooner or later, the costs for the EEG devices Richard Davidson uses to study the brain waves ot Tibetan Buddhist monks will trop as well, if university projects like PLUX Biosignals also participate in the development of those.