Cyton data stuttering; somehow being read in chunks
Hi,
I've been using the Cyton for over 5 years now and haven't encountered these problems before. I've linked a video demonstrating the problem since it's difficult to describe with words alone.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NtbR2NZUXz8
Essentially, my Cytons appear to take massive "breaks" when sending data. At first I thought this was a GUI issue, but Synthetic data worked perfectly and my Ganglion sends data without any problems. This stuttering seems to be worse within the OpenBCI GUI, but I recorded the same phenomenon with OpenBCI_LSL. I have tested these Cytons on two computers and they exhibit the same behavior. I've tried various batteries that have been verified with a multimeter, so I don't think it's a power issue. The strange thing is that I've been using these exact Cytons on both of these computers for years and they never had any problems. Both of the machines are Windows 10. I also believe I encountered a similar issue on a different Windows 10 computer that has previously worked without any issues.
My current guess is that there may be something strange with the firmware I'm running, but both Cytons are running stock firmware. I don't think the connection to the dongle is the problem. I've had the amplifier and dongle sitting right next to each other through use of an extension USB cable and it didn't seem to make a difference. All of these tests have been conducted on USB 3.0 and 2.0. I've tested things with OpenBCI GUI versions 4.0.4, 5.0.4, and 5.0.9.
It might be worth noting that on version 4.0.4 (compiled through Processing) + OpenBCI Hub 2.1.0, the stuttering is less pronounced.
Looking forward to your ideas and thanks in advance for the help.
Comments
Hi Qoz,
So in your previous years of Cyton usage on Windows, did you apply the 'latency' fix to the FTDI driver?
https://docs.openbci.com/Troubleshooting/FTDI_Fix_Windows/
William
Hi William,
Glad to see you're still on the forums helping after all these years!
I applied this fix and it seems to have solved my issues -- thank you very much. I find it a bit strange that these problems emerged after years of smooth sailing, but I've had Microsoft mess perfectly good things up before so I'm not too surprised.
Again, thanks a lot!
Thanks. It's possible that years ago, you changed the FTDI driver latency (to 1ms), and your system worked fine then and for subsequent years. Then if Microsoft automatically upgraded the FTDI driver, the setting may have been lost.