Getting Started docs feedback

keturn

> 2. a. Attach the 4 plastic feet to your OpenBCI board plus some spaghetti

Spaghetti? What?

> 2. d. Connect your electrodes to the OpenBCI board: Black->BIAS; White->SRB; Gray->N1P

There are two rows of pins, use upper or lower? There's another thread about this.

> 4. 3. Connect 1 reference electrode to the earlobe

> 4. 4. Connect 1 EEG channel electrode (any location on the head from where you want to sample EEG)

I'm assuming the ground electrode is black (which we connected to BIAS). Is the reference electrode SRB and the EEG signal N1?

> //docs.openbci.com/02-OpenBCI_GUI

This seems to be the 01 document copied a few times.

keturn

> 3.2. Download GWOptics and ControlP5 Libraries

If you download these by following the links from the main Processing site, you'll end up with a version of ControlP5 that doesn't work. This is mentioned in the source: "Requires ControlP5 library, but an older one.  This will only work

with the ControlP5 library that is included with this GitHub repository."

So the steps are more like:

1. Download Processing
2. Download the OpenBCI_Processing Github Repository: git clone https://github.com/OpenBCI/OpenBCI_Processing.git
3. copy OpenBCI_Processing/libraries/* to your Processing libraries folder to install the GWOptics and ControlP5 Libraries
   
4. copy OpenBCI_Processing/OpenBCI_GUI to your Processing sketchbook folder -- this might be optional, but it makes OpenBCI_GUI show up in a menu when you first open Processing.

the controlP5 install instructions tell you where to find your Processing sketchbook folder. (Open Preferences in Processing and check the "Sketchbook folder" setting.)

wjcroft

>> 2. a. Attach the 4 plastic feet to your OpenBCI board plus some spaghetti

>Spaghetti? What?

Curious about that myself(!)  :-)  Could be a joke that is just going over my head...

>> 2. d. Connect your electrodes to the OpenBCI board: Black->BIAS; White->SRB; Gray->N1P

>There are two rows of pins, use upper or lower? There's another thread about this.

Connect just as the photo #c shows, using the upper row.

>> 4. 3. Connect 1 reference electrode to the earlobe

>> 4. 4. Connect 1 EEG channel electrode (any location on the head from where you want to sample EEG)

>I'm assuming the ground electrode is black (which we connected to BIAS). Is the reference electrode SRB and the EEG signal N1P?

Yes.  If you look at the actual Texas Instruments data sheet, the sensor input pins are labeled IN1P, IN1N, (differential pair input), IN2P, IN2N, etc.  Because of limited label space area on the PC board, that was shortened to N1P, etc.  When the SRB1 bus is used as a reference in this case, all the IN*N pins are ganged together on the single SRB1 pin.

Thanks for your other note on the Processing libraries, I hope we can incorporate those into Docs section.  If you are a Github user, it's possible to fork our repository and send a Pull request for your mods.

William

brain

“Spaghetti” is a term/joke tech-heads use to refer to messy wires and cables — in this case, electrode leads, power cable, etc. Of course, the main documentation for a beginner-friendly device may not be the best place for unreferenced geek-speak

I may be wrong, but that’s what I’ve used the term for for as long as I can remember.

Omphalosskeptic

wjcroft

> “Spaghetti” is a term/joke tech-heads use to refer to messy wires and cables

Duh(!), thanks Brain, I'm sure that was the reference.  And...  'spaghetti' was also the electronics term used in the "radio days" of say the 1940's through 1960's for varnished cloth or fiberglass tubing placed over bare wires. Before the modern "heat shrink tubing" took it's place.  :-)   So that's the image it brought up in my head, a possible reference to tubing. Modern forms are "sleeving" or teflon tubing.

http://antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=71846  Real spaghetti.

William

keturn

Yes, I would have normally read "spaghetti" as a description of a tangled mess, but there are no wires involved with this step! And while the ten electrode leads certainly have the potential to become that, they're still bonded in a single ribbon for now.

As for those connections, you're referring to the ADS1299 data sheet? I'll have to spend some time with that. I'm much more of a software hacker than hardware, but it'll be useful to know a little more about what each of these connections do.

biomurph

OMG!

Yes, we are getting our getting started guides together!

We just stepped out of firmware finalization mode shipping all of the various kits and boards, and switching modes to getting started stuff.

Thank you for your patience!

wjcroft

Joel, here's a photo glitch on the same page, http://docs.openbci.com/01-8bitstart

Figure 2d shows the Dongle switch in the Reset position(!)  Of course it's shipped in the correct position, but those trying to match the photos "exactly", may get derailed.  We already had one user discover his dongle switch was in the Reset position. (Dongle "wasn't working".) So others might do the same.  :-)

William

biomurph

DOH!

XS2Mind

Please do not say RTFM I did my best for 3 days now. I am using Firefox as a browser.

First of al when I go to docs I only see a "getting started" for the 8 bit board. I supposed it is the same for the 32 bit board.

When I go to downloads there are two klickable links in the introduction text. When I click them the only thing that happens is an "#" added to the URL.

So I added "learning" to the URL manually and that brought me to the proper directory (I hope). There was a getting started and I learned that the procedure for 8 and 32 bit was equal.

In the picture of the dongle the switch was on S1. I have read in the forum that there is a picture of the dongle in the reset mode. But I cant find is this is already corrected. So my first question is if this switch should be on S1?

I downloaded "Processing" and the "OpenBCI_Processing-master" from GitHub. I read the reamrks in the forum about the movement of the 2 libraries. I had to make a "libraries" directory IN the "OpenBCI_Processing-master" directory and copy the 2 libraries into that to get something that ran.

So I started "Processing" and opened "OpenBCI_GUI.pde" A new processing window open and in "the main window" I get this error report:

java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: -1
    at java.lang.String.substring(Unknown Source)
    [cut a lot of messages because otherwise my post will be to long]
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(Unknown Source)

I have no clue what is means.

When I run the program in the "side window" It mentions:
Starting setup...
OpenBCI_GUI: loading playback data from EEG_Data\openBCI_2013-12-24_relaxation.txt
OpenBCI_GUI: loading complete.  125130 rows of data, which is 501 seconds of EEG data
OpenBCI_ADS1299: startDataTransfer: using current dataMode...
OpenBCI_ADS1299: startDataTransfer: received command for mode = -1
setup: Setup complete...

I get what that means. It is running a pre recorded file.

So I look for the "Select your serial/COM port in the left hand menu and click Initialize System."

And find no "left hand menu"

As a matter of fact a non-scalable window has opened (That is just a bit to big for my laptop :-( ) That very much look like the example but without the "control panel" in the left upper corner.

I have a bleu led on the dongle and on the board and it makes no difference how the dongle switch is set (that cant be a good thing, I guess)

Where did I make a mistake? Please help.

BTW I also downloaded the the application.windows32 and application.windows64 but they both don't do more than letting my mouse pointer give a wait signal. I guess that comes later.

Warm greetings,

Paul

wjcroft

Paul, hi. The "S1" on the front of the board is just the name of the component "Switch #1". The actual function positions are printed on the back, "RESET" and "GPIO_6". Switch MUST be in GPIO_6 to work. When you insert the dongle, you should see a new COM# port show up in your Device Manager control panel. And the first time you inserted, did you see that the drivers were installed from the Microsoft site? The matching COM# port must be specified in the GUI.

If the drivers are having problems, there will be a question mark on the corresponding COM port in the Device Manager list. If everything is ok, no question mark.

XS2Mind

Hi William,

Thank you for your swift response.

I have a USB Serial port (COM5) and no question marks whatsoever. Yes I saw that MS drivers were installed although it was defined as COM4 at the moment of install.

I do not have a means to specify it in the GUI. Or I cant see them because of the non scalable window that opens. The switch was set right. GPIO6 was on the other side ;-)

Warm greetings,

Paul

DavyD

Is there supposed to be a blue light on the main board? I see the one on the single lit up but not on my main board.

DavyD

Hi, I'm trying to connect to my new V3 board on my MacBook Pro. It doesnt seem to be able to connect. I have all the hardware set up exactly like the instruction.  I have the dongle plugged into the port on the side of my mac and not through a port expander, if that make a diff, I dont know. 

Here is what I see in my Serial/com Port list in the OpenBCI_GUI:

/dev/tty.Bluetooth-Serial-2
/dev/tty.Bluetooth-Serial-1
/dev/tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync
/dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem
/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Serial-2
/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Serial-1
/dev/cu.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync
/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Modem

My output when I do Start System is:

init
port is open? ... false
-- Init 0 --
Preparing data variables...
-- Init 1 --
a--0
a--1
a--2
a--3
a--4
a--5
a--6
a--7
b
-- Init 2 --
OpenBCI_ADS1299: prefered_datamode = 1, nValuesPerPacket = 8
 a
 b
port is open? ... false
 i
OpenBCI_ADS1299: attempting to open serial port /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Serial-1
port is open (t)? ... true
 j
-- Init 3 --
1
2
Buttons: 81, 66
creating channel setting buttons...
3
4
5
6
-- Init 4 --
OpenBCI_GUI: closing log file
openBCI: openNewLogFile: opened output file: SavedData\OpenBCI-RAW-2014-12-10_21-13-00.txt
attempting
[0] Sending 'v' to OpenBCI to reset hardware in case of 32bit board...
Halting system for reconfiguration of settings...
stopRunning...
writing 's' to the serial port...
Closing any open SD file. Writing 'j' to OpenBCI.
 d
 e
 e2
 f
 g
 h

Any help would be appreciated. I'm more of a front end developer than a hw guy.

wjcroft

Davy, are you running Mavericks or Yosemite.  Using the search box (lower right), look for "Mavericks". Your Dongle is not being recognized.

DavyD

I'm running 10.8.5

wjcroft

Davy, when you insert your dongle, you should see a file /dev/tty.usb* show up. Be sure your dongle switch is not in the Reset position.

If the tty.usb* is not showing up, there could be something wrong with your driver software. Or it might be missing; though I thought pre-Mavericks had FTDI drivers pre-installed. Go to http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm and install the driver there.

DavyD

Ok I'll try that (installing)

Whats the order for start up? 
1) plug in dongle, make sure not in reset
2) wait 20 seconds, turn on OBCI board, wait 10 seconds

what about resetting, does it matter which order I reset first? board or dongle?

wjcroft

I'm not sure power up order is that important. Just insert dongle, then power up board (PC position). No need for 10 or 20 second delays.

When dongle is inserted, (assuming your driver is installed), you should see the /dev/tty.usb* file show up in your Terminal window ("ls -l /dev/tty.usb*"). When you start GUI, click on that tty device to select.

XS2Mind

Hi William,

Can you please comment more on my problem. Is there
more info you need. At the moment I am completely stuck and the weekend
is coming ;-) I find no way to set my dongle in the GUI.

Warm greetings,

Paul

biomurph

We are adding more to the docs page every day.

@X2Smind

did you install drivers from the FTDI website?

http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

The Dongle is a VCP. After you install, you will (likely) need to restart Processing in order to see the port.

@wjcroft

we have found that it's best to turn on the board after the dongle is powered up and blue light is on.

simply switching the board 'off' and then either to 'pc' or 'ble' will suffice. 

sometimes, the dongle doesn't 'see' the board, even though you can see the dongle serial port on the computer.

wjcroft

Joel, Paul (X2Smind) has his dongle installed and working correctly, see his posts above. He sees the new COM port correctly in the Windows Device Manager. No problems there.

He is getting some error messages from the GUI, he says in his post above:

> So I look for the "Select your serial/COM port in the left hand menu and click Initialize System."
> And find no "left hand menu"
> As a matter of fact a non-scalable window has opened (That is just a bit to big for my laptop :-( )
> That very much look like the example but without the "control panel" in the left upper corner.

William

keturn

I was able to help a friend get started with their board today. They hit the Mac OS X driver problem, and rather than go through that they decided to use their Linux computer instead, but everything else went well enough.

A google search brought them to an old documentation page at http://openbci.com/index.php/gettingstarted , but I like what you've done with the new updates on docs.openbci.com! It's much clearer and having the pre-packaged app installers is a good move.

wjcroft

@XS2Mind : Paul, hi again.

Let's try another angle, since you might be hitting screen size issues in the GUI. Run the BrainBay installer from http://www.shifz.org/brainbay/ . Start Brainbay.

You can then setup a very simple design / "circuit".  OpenBCI EEG element on the left, connect one of the channels to a Filter element, then connect the Filter output to an Oscilloscope. Filter parameters would be say a Butterworth Bandpass filter, order 6, from .5 hz to 40 hz. If you say you have Bioexplorer experience, you'll be right at home.

All the design blocks "open up" by right clicking on them. In the EEG block, put in your COM port and press the Connect button. The check box should come on. When your circuit is ready, press Play button in the lower left of the main window. Adjust the slider in the Oscil. to set your full scale uV.

William

XS2Mind

With shame I have to report what went wrong. "Processing" was automatically going to an old directory for the .pde. Therefore the wrong OpenBCI_GUI opened. Since I had set the "sketchbook location" right in the preferences I did not see that.

Tonight at 4 AM (local time) it dawned to me. So first thing this morning was to make a c:/processing and put all the stuff in there. Than I reset the preferences and on starting up saw that it did not go to the preferences directory (back to the old one again) so I manually corrected that.

I put an electrode (grey wire) on F3, ear clip (white) on A1 (left ear) SRB, ear clip (black) on A2 BIAS.
So I go to the system control panel, choose "LIVE", refresh list, choose com5, press Start System (some leds flash on the dongle green and red and some messages appear in the message area on the bottom about initialising the system. The message that I should click anywhere and I have a scalable screen. The message area says "Press 'press to start' and I suppose that means press 'start data stream'.

I see  a signal on channel 6 that doesn't respond on tapping on the electrodes (none of the three)

And more disturbing a red light is lit on the dongle.

So I shut the system down. Remove the dongle, reboot the computer.

Windows starts a big update and I sit with the electrodes on my head a the kitchen window, while neighbours are rushing to their jobs, looking funny ;-)

So I repeat the procedure.
No visible signal red led on dongle.

I can still use some help.

Thanks in advance,

Paul

XS2Mind

I'll report tomorrow on the Brainbay option. I have downloaded it. Looks fine but have clients to attent.

keturn

I think lights on the dongle are red for Transmit, green for Receive. So a red light isn't itself indicative of a problem, although I wouldn't expect it to be on as much as the green one when the data starts coming in.

Conor Russomanno

DavyD:

RE:

Whats the order for start up?  

1) plug in dongle, make sure not in reset

2) wait 20 seconds, turn on OBCI board, wait 10 seconds

what about resetting, does it matter which order I reset first? board or dongle?

Sometimes a data hiccup happens and you'll need to unplug your dongle and power down your board. It's important to plug your dongle in before powering up your board again, but you don't need to wait more than a second or two. But remember, if something seems to go whacky with the data transmission, all systems down. Dongle first (on GPIO 6), then board on.

XS2Mind:

RE your recent post. I'm glad to hear you got the Processing GUI situation mostly figured out. The GUI itself should be resizable. The implementation of the resize is a bit klunky right now, but it does work on my MAC machine, with 10.8.5.

Right now, I believe some of the exported apps that are listed on the downloads page are not working properly. I don't know if this is a result of the Processing version that we exported from or the fact that we were exporting from Processing on a Mac machine for Windows and Linux. I've done a little digging into Processing's forums to figure this out, but more work needs to be done here.

Keep us posted on whether or not you get the full system up and running.

Also, the latest Getting Started w/ OpenBCI doc is under development. Look for updates this weekend. 

Conor Russomanno

Also, if anybody get's working versions of the Win32, Win64, Linux32, or Linux64 apps working. Please link the zips here, and I'll switch them out on the downloads page of the site and the getting started guide.

XS2Mind

@wjcroft

I am working with the "processing" option right now because the compiled exe's  for windows do absolutely nothing! Neither 32 bits nor 64 bits. At unzipping I get a message from windows that is can not "encrypt" the folders. The message is in Dutch so I hope to have translated this well.

The files are unpacked well. But absolutely nothing happens on clicking. Also no error messages. Nothing.

In processing I have a scalable screen, look well. I can work with prerecorded meditation file. I can also use the "synthetic" option.

But when I go "LIVE" there is no signal. And a bright red led is lighting up continuously.

On switching the board to "off" and back to "PC" the red led on the dongle blinks twice but the blue led on the board does not blink, neither the blue led on the dongle.

Same with Brainbay. Made a simple design. And on pressing "Play" I see nothing in the scope, nor in the FFT. And a bright red led is burning.

Warm greetings,

Paul

wjcroft

Paul, hi.

Sorry for the delay getting back to you. OK, I think I've reproduced what is happening to you there. I apologize that our docs are under some degree of flux and reorganization. I think that is primarily what is tripping people up.

Our only picture on the docs site at the moment showing electrode connection is this one.

Dang, that link doesnt even work(!)  It's the section titled "V. Connect Yourself to OpenBCI" in the left column menu.

This photo shows the electrodes connected on the pins farthest from the board surface. (The INxP pins, SRB1, and BIAS). The 32-bit board I have here (from the final manufacturing run) -- appears to default to using the row of pins CLOSEST to the board. These are the INxN pins, SRB2 and BIAS).

In other words, if you followed the picture and connected your wires as shown, no signals will be getting through to your board in the default state. The solution is to just move all your wires over to the row closest to the board. Yes it is possible to adjust settings in the GUI to change which pins are active. But for the default case on power up, it appears best to use the INxN pins and SRB2. The BIAS pin is the same one on both rows.

With this modification, you should see some data getting through. And the Brainbay test I suggested should also work for you.

All the LED light activity you mention is normal. When the data stream is active, the red light on the dongle will be mostly on solid with some slight flickering. Blue light on the dongle is present all the time. Green light on the dongle flashes briefly on startup, stop, button presses but otherwise is off.

For the 32-bit board, when that is powered up, the blue light comes on solid. It does NOT flash 3 times as some of our docs pages suggest.

Now I think on the 8-bit board, the 3 times flash is present on power up of the OpenBCI board. So this appears to be a subtle difference in the firmware of the two systems.

Also on at least one of the 8-bit boards I've seen from the trial manufacturing run, the default pins used are the INxP, SRB1 pins. I think on the final manufacturing run both the 8-bit and 32-bit defaults were changed to use the INxN, SRB2 pins by default. At least that is my speculation. And why the photograph on the site might show the old configuration. I believe that photo and section of the docs site is next to be brought up to date.

Let me know if this gets you going.

Best regards,

William

PS one of the easiest signals to detect is your ECG using sensors on your left and right forearms. This signal is large, about 200 uV, so change your scale factor so that the scope is in range.