October Newsletter

Hello OpenBCI Community!

We hope you’ve been enjoying the warm Summer weather! As the season comes to an end, we want to update you on the latest news concerning OpenBCI. We have been working all Summer in some cool projects we wish to share with you! In addition, we made great developments in the design of both the Ganglion and the Mark IV. Due to the many things that came our way this Summer we have to delay the release date of the Ganglion and the Mark IV until November. You can read more about this below.

 

  1. General Survey Link
  2. Firmware V2.0.0
  3. Ganglion Update
  4. Mark IV Update
  5. OpenBCI + Myoware
  6. Halloween Special
  7. Past and future events!
    • Open Hardware Summit
    • IEEE Brain Hackathon in Philly
    • NeurotechX San Francisco BCI Workshop
    • Budapest Hackathon IEEE
    • Transtech 200 Conference (Pulse sensor too!)

1. Community Survey

We hope that your experience with OpenBCI has been awesome! We are constantly trying to improve the OpenBCI platform. For this reason we ask that you give us 5 minutes of your time, and complete our latest survey.

Your feedback is extremely valuable for us! Your answers will be anonymous and we will post the answers to selected questions in our newsletter.

2. Firmware Update V 2.0.0

We have updated the firmware on all of our boards! So if you order now you’ll get our latest software. We have also updated the master branch for the radios and libraries on the OpenBCI Github!

In addition, now all of our boards will come with the headers soldered in and ready to go so get yours now.

3. Ganglion Update

Estimated Delivery: November 2016

In our quest to bring the best low cost EEG we have been working tirelessly and our circuit design schematic is up on Github. The ramp up to production is underway, and we are expecting to ship your Ganglion with the Ultracortex headsets!

4. Mark IV Update

Estimated Delivery: November 2016

UCM4-Product-2

 

Mark IV is officially in production and available for pre-order! We are completely done with the design phase and now anxiously awaiting parts from our manufacturing partners. We expect to have parts in hand by early November, at which point we will begin assembling, kitting, and shipping headset kits as fast as we are able!

We are also very excited to announce an official partnership with Voodoo manufacturing—our Brooklyn neighbors. They have been great production partners in the Mark IV prototyping process and also in the creation of the Mark III. Our official partnership has received some awesome media attention lately!

Conor hanging at Voodoo Manufacturing with Jonathan Schwartz and Johnny Falla from the Enable Hands Foundation

Conor hanging at Voodoo Manufacturing with Jonathan Schwartz and Johnny Falla from the Enable Hands Foundation

5. Myoware and OpenBCI Integration

In our quest to bring the best open-source innovation of human-computer interface technologies, OpenBCI has partnered with Advancer Technologies to integrate their Kickstarter funded, EMG sensor MYOWARE with OpenBCI software and hardware. You can check the tutorial here! OpenBCI is really excited about this new partnership and we hope to keep providing you with the best biosensing technology available. Myoware is now available for purchase through the OpenBCI store.

myo

6. Halloween Special

ghost

In the spirit of Halloween, we have decided to reward all of our new customers with a special limited edition treat. This is why if you order through the OpenBCI store from now until Halloween, you’ll get a free 3D-printed glow in the dark ghost keychain. Get yours now while supplies last!

 

7. Past and Future Events

Open Hardware Summit

Joel attended the Open Source Hardware Association Summit in Portland Oregon on the 7th of October, and it was an Open Source Love Fest as expected! The biggest news is about the rollout of the Open Source Hardware Certification mark, which you can soon expect to see gracing the silkscreen on our PCBs and product pages of our website. He also had a chance to meet a few of our Kickstarter backers!

IEEE Brain Hackathon in Philly

Each team was equipped OpenBCI boards to capture data from the brain (via wireless EEG) and from muscles (via surface EMG electrodes). The goal was to spend the weekend creating an application that creatively uses real-time signals to do something fun and interesting. Teams were expected to dream up their own creative and fun applications. Here are this year’s teams and their projects:

Team 1: Columbia University BCI-NES
Team 2: Rowan University IEEE-Hackathon-Rowan-Team
Team 3: Temple University TUBrainHackAttack
Team 4: Temple University IEEE_BRAIN_HACK_TEMPLE
Team 5: Cooper Union TUBrainHack16_TeamCooper
Team 6: University of Pennsylvania IEEEtubrainhack
Team 7: University of Pennsylvania TU_EEGHackathon

NeuroTechX BCI San Francisco Workshop

In this workshop, organized by NeuroTechX and Hotel Zetta, the attendees learned from the neuroscience fundamentals and move up their way up to the applications of BCI. By the end, they were able to play with their very own brain-computer interface, understanding the components involved. Through this process the NeuroTechXers were able to get a sense of the technology involved, its potential, and its limits.

The workshop focused on a specific brain-computer interface in the interactive portion, but NeuroTechX explained the concepts broadly, and provided plenty of guidance and resources so that everyone present would know where to start to build your own project with brainwaves.

IEEE Budapest Hackathon

Congrats to team Artificial Neuron for using OpenBCI, and winning the $1K Qusp prize atIEEE Brain Hackathon in Budapest last week!

Transformative Technology Conference

Last weekend, OpenBCI attended the Transformative Technology Conference in Palo Alto. OpenBCI was recognized as one of the top 200 most influential companies in the space of transformative technology. What an honor!

Thank You!

From everyone at OpenBCI, we want to say thank you. Your support is making the open source neurorevolution possible. We look forward to getting the latest OpenBCI technology into your hands. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out: [email protected]

All the best,

The OpenBCI Team

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