[HN Gopher] Measure EEG with Arduino
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       Measure EEG with Arduino
        
       Author : Christiangmer
       Score  : 24 points
       Date   : 2025-05-15 12:51 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.instructables.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.instructables.com)
        
       | pestatije wrote:
       | > This Instructable was just published and is still pending
       | review.
        
       | spzb wrote:
       | Requires only $600 worth of additional equipment. "With Arduino"
       | is doing some heavy lifting.
        
         | tsumnia wrote:
         | Technically still "hobby"-level, I recently acquired the
         | OpenBCI Ultracortex [1] and that's sitting at $3k
         | 
         | [1] https://shop.openbci.com/products/the-complete-headset-eeg
        
           | spzb wrote:
           | Everything's hobby level if you have deep enough pockets.
        
             | tsumnia wrote:
             | Everything's a hobby until you want to start making money
             | with it
        
       | brookst wrote:
       | I am so, so excited for the coming wave of non-invasive EEG-based
       | BCI. It feels like the Internet did in the 80's: obviously on the
       | way, but frustratingly far away.
        
       | ThrowawayR2 wrote:
       | This user is the PiEEG spammer on an alternate account. The
       | GitHub links go to the pieeg-club account, the Youtube link goes
       | to a pieeg account, the more information link in step 6 goes to
       | the pieeg site. Nearly every submission from this user promotes
       | PiEEG in some way even though the URLs go to different legitimate
       | sites (turning on showdead is recommended):
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Christiangmer
       | 
       | He's built up a really impressive network of accounts and
       | apparently the HN moderators haven't noticed him yet.
       | 
       | Pierewsa - https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Pierewsa
       | 
       | ron_87 - https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ron_87
       | 
       | marcelobaeb -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=marcelobaeb
       | 
       | ildaron_ron -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ildaron_ron
       | 
       | Marat_Japan - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Marat_Japan
       | 
       | Marat_1975 - https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Marat_1975
       | 
       | Marat_1975_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Marat_1975_
       | 
       | Ildarmon - https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Ildarmon
       | 
       | Teraminsa - https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Teraminsa
       | 
       | Tiramisu-soup -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Tiramisu-soup
       | 
       | GaredFagsss1 -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=GaredFagsss1
       | 
       | leisanrain - https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=leisanrain
        
         | babuloseo wrote:
         | yeah this is why we vet everyone on the steamdeck sub and ask
         | them for identification verification or atleast team size and
         | stuff when people post their indie games to verify if they are
         | really "indie" I have vetted like 30-50 man companies from UAE
         | this way lol, always be asking questions and always see if
         | something doesnt pass the sniff test.
        
       | synapsomorphy wrote:
       | I fabbed a couple FreeEEG32 boards [1] recently and have half of
       | a design for my own board put together.
       | 
       | This technology CANNOT effectively move a mouse around on a
       | screen today, much less control robots. If it could, they
       | wouldn't have to implant things in paralyzed patients' brains
       | just for basic computer control.
       | 
       | I do think it's a very interesting field and there's a lot of
       | improvements to be made. It's also extremely sensitive to noise
       | (for best signal you can't be anywhere near mains power), any
       | movement of facial muscles completely drowns out the brain
       | signal, and getting electrodes prepped properly is time consuming
       | and requires skill. And even in optimal conditions the SNR is not
       | amazing.
       | 
       | I'm looking into dry, active electrodes as well as inter-
       | electrode impedance detection to solve electrode prep, and a
       | driven right leg circuit to help SNR. TI ADS1299 (ADC used by
       | this and most other hobbyist EEG boards - directly targeted at
       | EEG thus fairly expensive) has impedance detection and a DRL
       | circuit but best I can tell neither is used by most boards [2].
       | I'm also interested in pogo pin electrode arrays for increasing
       | spatial resolution.
       | 
       | Honestly most EEG boards seem, to me, more for show and money
       | than anything else. No one even attempts to quantify noise
       | levels, and they have very large margins for basically being
       | breakout boards for ADC chips. (and $300+ for a fabric cap with
       | passive electrodes???) And no one who says "look at all this
       | stuff you can control with EEG!" has any projects of actually
       | controlling anything with EEG, because it's extremely difficult.
       | They just link to old papers where someone put together a control
       | system slightly better than random chance.
       | 
       | Would love to collaborate on something here if anyone has any
       | interesting ideas, I think hobbyist EEG could be done a whole lot
       | better.
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/neuroidss/FreeEEG32-beta
       | 
       | [2] This one does implement impedance measurement which is nice.
        
         | pedalpete wrote:
         | You're completely right on so many levels.
         | 
         | We're not hobbyist level, I'm the co-founder of
         | https://affectablesleep.com, so consumer grade sleep eeg, but
         | the main point is to increase the brain's restorative function,
         | not just measure sleep, your watch/ring is good enough for
         | that.
         | 
         | We spent a LOT of time designing our dry electrodes, which work
         | well, but in our final hardware, we've still decided to go with
         | active electrodes (amplified signal, for those not familiar).
         | You definitely need an RLD as well.
         | 
         | The ability to move a mouse with just occipital electrodes and
         | ref and rld has been done quite a bit, and there are projects
         | such as this (https://openelectronicslab.github.io/eeg-mouse/)
         | which show how it's done, as well as many published research
         | papers.
         | 
         | However, that isn't to suggest it's easy. As you've said,
         | movement noise is a significant challenge. You'll need to be
         | very still or else the electrode movement just causes a ton of
         | noise.
         | 
         | Your noise level comes less from the board than the electrode
         | set-up.
         | 
         | You mention [2] that does impedance measurement as well, but no
         | link, can you post that?
        
       | blitzar wrote:
       | Going to make a Doc Brown Mind Reading Helmet with this.
       | 
       | https://www.instructables.com/Back-to-the-Future-Doc-Browns-...
        
       | babuloseo wrote:
       | Anyone interested in building full dive VR machines lol.
        
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