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Mostly around safety and pragmatics, which leads to regulatory compliance and investor preference. Invasive hardware means implanting into the brain, potentiall

by Mumps 5y ago

Mostly around safety and pragmatics, which leads to regulatory compliance and investor preference. Invasive hardware means implanting into the brain, potentially deep brain work. This is, risky, expensive, and requires some serious expertise. If you can get past the low signal quality of external (non-invasive) devices, then you open up a way cheaper, way safer, avenue. Hope that helps. Can give detail if you'd like. source: two research degrees in neurosci, and did some almost-startups in brain-computer interface hardware.

pjbeam 5y ago
Makes sense, thank you. I do figure elective brain surgery will be a thing at some point but we seem a ways off from that today.
nrat 5y ago
As someone looking to tinker with this kind of thing at home, would you recommend OpenBCI? Are there any more "consumer friendly" projects out there (i.e. off the shelf) that are affordable at a hobbyist level?
- Mumps 5y ago
  hey! sorry to get back late - don't get HN notifications. OpenBCI is a really solid start! Though, I'd suggest it's too expensive for most people to start tinkering with it. It also has/had some reaaallly basic featuring, like writing out information as txt, instead of any other signal output datatype. But that's all fine! (just unsophisticated) You can start off [way cheaper](https://www.instructables.com/Mini-Arduino-Portable-EEG-Brain-Wave-Monitor-/ https://www.instructables.com/Mini-Arduino-Portable-EEG-Brai...), and even make an [electrode out of a penny](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yglqbxYBC7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yglqbxYBC7Q). Spend some time planning what you want your first project or two to be, and then get the cheapest, lowest-feature thing from there. If you want to *really* learn some stuff, I'd suggest you focus more time on computationally processing eeg signal (you can get [an insane amount](https://sccn.ucsd.edu/~arno/fam2data/publicly_available_EEG_data.html https://sccn.ucsd.edu/~arno/fam2data/publicly_available_EEG_...) of sample data for free). What you get from hardware yourself will just have the cool-factor of being your own :)
  - nrat 5y ago
    Thanks for the detailed response! I'll look into that!

by Mumps 5y ago

pjbeam 5y ago

Makes sense, thank you. I do figure elective brain surgery will be a thing at some point but we seem a ways off from that today.

nrat 5y ago

As someone looking to tinker with this kind of thing at home, would you recommend OpenBCI? Are there any more "consumer friendly" projects out there (i.e. off the shelf) that are affordable at a hobbyist level?

Mumps 5y ago
hey! sorry to get back late - don't get HN notifications. OpenBCI is a really solid start! Though, I'd suggest it's too expensive for most people to start tinkering with it. It also has/had some reaaallly basic featuring, like writing out information as txt, instead of any other signal output datatype. But that's all fine! (just unsophisticated) You can start off [way cheaper](https://www.instructables.com/Mini-Arduino-Portable-EEG-Brain-Wave-Monitor-/ https://www.instructables.com/Mini-Arduino-Portable-EEG-Brai...), and even make an [electrode out of a penny](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yglqbxYBC7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yglqbxYBC7Q). Spend some time planning what you want your first project or two to be, and then get the cheapest, lowest-feature thing from there. If you want to *really* learn some stuff, I'd suggest you focus more time on computationally processing eeg signal (you can get [an insane amount](https://sccn.ucsd.edu/~arno/fam2data/publicly_available_EEG_data.html https://sccn.ucsd.edu/~arno/fam2data/publicly_available_EEG_...) of sample data for free). What you get from hardware yourself will just have the cool-factor of being your own :)
- nrat 5y ago
  Thanks for the detailed response! I'll look into that!