Hey everyone, been a while since I've updated you all but as people are receiving the most recent batch of devices and there are some troubleshooting questions let me give a solid update on everything and some bulk answers to common questions coming up right now.
First off, firmware:
I didn't realize some of my text was still outdated on github. There is no longer this slow flashing routine on the latest and the device defaults to Bluetooth LE connection mode as it was just starting to annoy me, and BLE is more reliable. USB is additionally always usable, you can send commands through USB or BLE to control it otherwise. If the USB port doesn't show up, try manually installing the CP210x VCP driver. It works on windows and mac, should work on linux. That driver should be in your computer by default but I have had to install it occasionally on mine.
Secondly, software:
Brains@Play was broken the past week due to a mountain of low level updates we're making to the platform, as of today it should work again. The older hegalomania.netlify.app should work no problem as it hasn't changed, but I'll give that a good thorough look. If you're into software development what we're doing with Brains@Play is making a toolset so that anyone will be able to create high performance software for any BCI (and next we think environmental sensing) devices we can integrate into a browser/online context, so for HEG and beyond we hope to provide a ton of free content for neurofeedback and general education. What you see is currently somewhere between pre-alpha and alpha, while we have a big project ongoing to make it into a more fully realized neurofeedback studio, integrated with a community content generation toolset. If you check our github I recently released a bunch of libraries showing off some of the high performance web application tools we've generated in the process, where we are able to handle real time signal analysis for currently up to 32 channel EEGs. Lots more going on there, with several other partner projects around it that are consuming most of my time.
Thirdly, this website:
I locked the forums for a while as someone kept manually signing in with new accounts to try to spam to forum. It'll probably happen again, but I've approved everyone who was legit and reopened forums for now. This site will move soonish to a Brains@Play themed home, as that's become the new front in partnership with Garrett Flynn and others.
Fourthly, hardware supply:
HEGs:
I'm kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place where the PCB design I'm using for the HEGduino V2's flexible breakout sensor is apparently not going to scale. 100 out of the 200 sensors I ordered went bad this time, whereas the last several batches I ordered to test were running into maybe 5%-10% failing which was at least acceptable for the time being. If anyone with some EE design experience has any recommendations to fix this problem permanently I'm all ears, otherwise I'm trying to move to a new safer design sooner than later while I try to fulfill the remaining supply order from CrowdSupply. So sales are frozen on my site, not really sure but HEGduino V2 might be dead after that as we're making a significant hardware upgrade that will be about the same cost to produce and provide way more channels and scaling possibilities.
EEGs:
I will have more news on the FreeEEG32 soon as well, we're dealing with pretty bad supply issues for the AD7771 and we're exploring options to try to get a larger order of chips in to get a factory supply sooner, but we need to come up with another $22K or so to make that possible. We're on the line for about 50 FreeEEG32s right now, so we have the funds from CrowdSupply to fulfill those but based on chip supply shortages we're still anywhere from 10 to 20 months from fulfilling those orders. We additionally tried a rework with some lower cost chips but we're not convinced yet the input impedance is reliable for a full 32 channels. Depending on the results from our incoming factory test (including a 128 channel version) that will be another option to get a FreeEEG32 board MUCH sooner, but we can't promises yet there.
(Hopefully better) Future hardware releases:
We're currently successfully testing a BLE 5, 8 channel device that fulfills almost every qualification for a clinical BCI device while involving less than 15 dollars in parts. Another engineer Jacob Tinkhauser joined the team and has been a great help with moving that project forward. With that we're attempting to create a 4 EEG + 4 HEG/FNIRS forehead sensing device, and we're also partnered with a rehab center to turn the same base into a multi sensor wearable for getting real time (and fully open source) data streams, right now involving EMG, PPG, an IMU, and potentially ECG - or a separate ECG version. We are also putting together a 16 channel FNIRS headset with still the same base, and then eventually testing our 28 channel FNIRS headset when we are able to comprehend the math better. We are also building a Voron V2.4 3d printer which will enable us to put some new digs on our devices, like actual hard cases with flexible polyproplyene or similar. We'll be able to support some of the production of EEG headsets as well.
There's a whole lot more going on in parallel, it's honestly boggling how quick a lot of big things are starting to happen while I still battle imposter syndrome and crappy luck with manufacturing, but I'll do my best to provide as much support to everyone who needs it so you all can get the most use out of your current devices. There will be more going out soon to continue to fulfill orders through CrowdSupply too, for those who haven't received them yet. Cheers.