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Low-cost brain computer interface for everyday use

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Abstract

With the growth in electroencephalography (EEG) based applications the demand for affordable consumer solutions is increasing. Here we describe a compact, low-cost EEG device suitable for daily use. The data are transferred from the device to a personal server using the TCP-IP protocol, allowing for wireless operation and a decent range of motion for the user. The device is compact, having a circular shape with a radius of only 25 mm, which would allow for comfortable daily use during both daytime and nighttime. Our solution is also very cost effective, approximately $350 for 24 electrodes. The built-in noise suppression capability improves the accuracy of recordings with a peak input noise below 0.35 μV. Here, we provide the results of the tests for the developed device. On our GitHub page, we provide detailed specification of the steps involved in building this EEG device which should be helpful to readers designing similar devices for their needs https://github.com/Ildaron/ironbci.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Pierre Clisson, an author of Timeflux open-source framework for the acquisition and real-time processing of biosignals.

We would also like to thank to Robert Oostenveld from Radboud University for his comments in the process of preparing this manuscript and to Sergey Stavisky from Stanford University for his advice on improving the quality of the manuscript.

We would like to express our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia

    Ildar Rakhmatulin

  2. Brainflow, Moscow, Russia

    Andrey Parfenov

  3. Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Zachary Traylor & Chang S. Nam

  4. Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, Russia

    Mikhail Lebedev

Authors
  1. Ildar Rakhmatulin
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  2. Andrey Parfenov
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  3. Zachary Traylor
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  4. Chang S. Nam
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  5. Mikhail Lebedev
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ildar Rakhmatulin.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study, in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data, in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

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Communicated by Bill J Yates.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

figure a

Noise test: a (left)—graph with process noise measurement where the electrode’s input is shorted internally by register MUXn[2:0], shown schematically on the right; b (left) graph with process noise measurement where the reference signal and EEG signal are shorted by electrodes, shown on the right, where 1 indicates the cable from measurement electrode and 2 indicates the cable from the reference electrode.

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Rakhmatulin, I., Parfenov, A., Traylor, Z. et al. Low-cost brain computer interface for everyday use. Exp Brain Res 239, 3573–3583 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-021-06231-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-021-06231-4

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