Selecting an EEG Device | Science for the Masses. Electroencephalography is by no means a new technology; first used to record the electrical activity of a human brain by Hans Berger in 1924, the phenomena of seemingly spontaneous electrical activity in the brains of mammals has been studied since as early as 1875. To put this in perspective, this was before Greece began using the Gregorian calendar.
As a nearly century old technology based in a relatively simplistic design, one who has never looked into purchasing one before might easily assume that EEG devices have become affordable and user-friendly, like so many other technologies available to us today; perhaps this dire misconception is a side effect of being spoiled by the rapid rise of the personal computer as a consumer technology. Unfortunately, while researching the options on the market for various projects, I’ve found that these two elusive factors, affordability and ease of use, are not available in any single product.
My first impulse was to buy an older, used EEG. OpenBCI 32-bit Board Kit (chipKIT™-compatible) – OpenBCI Online Store. Product Overview: The 32-bit OpenBCI board is a chipKIT™-compatible, 8-channel neural interface with a 32-bit processor. At its core, the 32-bit OpenBCI board implements the PIC32MX250F128B microcontroller, giving it more local memory and faster processing speeds than the 8-bit OpenBCI board. The board comes pre-flashed with the chipKIT™ bootloader, and our OpenBCI System Firmware. The tradeoff between this kit and the 8-bit kit is that the 8-bit option is better suited for novice programmers and people already familiar with the Arduino programming environment.
The OpenBCI 32-bit board can be used to sample brain activity (EEG), muscle activity (EMG), and heart activity (EKG). The board communicates wirelessly to a computer via the the OpenBCI programmable USB dongle, which is based on the RFDuino radio module. If you are only interested in using the board for research and don’t care about the hardware, don’t fret! This kit does not come with electrodes. This kit includes: OpenBCI Dongle: