Comment by simontheHWguy
4 months ago
To be honest, the two biggest drivers for this project were Cost and Signal Integrity. 1. Cost: This was my main frustration. The Cyton is currently priced at 1,249.I managed to get the Cerelog ESP−EEG down to 299 (assembled). I really wanted to lower the barrier to entry for individual researchers and hackers who can't drop a grand on a hobby board.
2. The Bias/Noise Implementation: While we both use the same high-end ADC (TI ADS1299), I implemented the Bias (Drive Right Leg) differently. I designed a true closed-loop feedback system. By actively driving the inverted common-mode signal back into the body, the board follows the TI spec aggressively for helping cancel out 60Hz mains hum
Regarding the analog front-end: The current version keeps the inputs flexible (firmware configurable) for different montages. However, I’ve found that most researchers just stick to a single standard montage configuration. Because the Cyton tries to be a "jack of all trades" for every possible montage, it compromises on physical filtering. For future revisions, I plan to trade some of that flexibility for dedicated common-mode and differential hardware filtering to lower the noise floor even further. I already had this on a previous revision prototype but decided to take not out for simplified testing. I'd like to add it back in to a future revision after some more prototype testing.
3. Connectivity: I’m using the ESP32 to stream over WiFi rather than a proprietary USB dongle. Ive been trying to get BLE SW working as well but noticed MAC drivers aren't the most friendly to my implementation.
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