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by bayesianhorse 4327 days ago
Thank you for the opinion. The price is the main reason I don't see myself buying one in the near future.

I rationalized the price because I figured it is very hard to build a nicely running prototype board with the (specialized) amplifier chip, and that there was at least a 100 or 200$ pure "convenience" charge in it.

1 comments

For an EE it's pretty easy to put these parts together and make them 'work', but it's fair to say that making the most out of a 24bit ADC is no easy task. That is unless you want 8+bits of noise on the line. You need to take great care decoupling the digital side from the analogue side, and also with the routing of the ADC inputs - guarding / shielding etc. If that's all been done properly it would certainly be worth paying a premium for the time that's gone into the design. I guess the question is has it?
I don't know if it is. But I also don't believe most people interested in BCI or biofeedback are electrical engineers...
My entire lab is filled with EE's focusing in neuroscience and brain-machine interfaces. We use implantable electrodes though, much better SNR and fewer corrupting noise sources.
Noob question: When you say "implantable electrodes", you mean for humans, or for animals?
Usually humans. I'm not involved in this kind of research, but BCI with implanted electrodes probably refers to cases where these electrodes are implanted for some other reason.

For example it can be necessary to find an epileptic seizure hot spot because you can't stick someone in an MRI tube for a few days on end.

It's hard to actually make a case for BCI as an assistive technology, because every single sceletal muscle in your body provides a better input signal than EEG ever could, and there aren't so many cases where people don't have any voluntary muscle function left. (My opinion... need not be correct!)