PsyPhy amplifier

In order to record EEG, we had used the newly designed PsyPhy for both on- and offline EEG data acquisistion. The PsyPhy connects to the computer via WiFi and it's data was obtained using EventIDE. To set up the amplifier, you must turn on the device via the switch and connect the laptop you are using to the PsyPhy wifi network. The password will be situated inside of the amplifier.

In EventIDE, turn on the desired channels (in our case, all of them) except for the bipolar channels. The reference channels are not mentioned in the software.

EventIDE settings for recording

In this section, we will provide you with the settings in EventIDE which we used to record our data. Some good tools to always include in your design are the impedance checker, the multi-channel analyzer and the power plot.

Electrodes

The breaker box and the electrode cap that were used are prone to updates. Check with PsyPhy for the newest updates.

Global variables

The global variables are the main modules you use in your EventIDE design. These are the ones we used with their respective settings and descriptions.

LSL stream

• Makes the outlet for the LSL stream to connect to other devices.
• The name you create for the LSL stream in EventIDE will be the name you use in Python
• Set the buffer to 1
• Set the sample size to 1

Multi-Channel analyzer

• Creates a visualizer for the eeg data
• Use the raw data setting to accurately asses the quality of the signal

Filewriter

• Saves the eeg data in the desired format
• Creates a base report and a Raw data report
• Has markers to indicate the start and pause of a trial
• Make sure you use the right delimiter settings. This is important for the data format. In our case, use the ','.

Powerplot

• Creates a powerplot of the signal

g.tec MobiLab

Before we had access to the PsyPhy, we used g.tec's MobiLab. This device has less channels however, and it's outdated proprietary drivers and software made a bit cumbersome to setup. We managed to get it to work using OpenVibe (see below). In order to connect the MobiLab, a VGA to usb adapter was required. In our case, we used the Alteq Prolific adapter, of which the driver can be found here: https://www.lmt.de/latest/Drivers/USB,%20PCIe-serial/PL2303_Prolific_DriverInstaller_v1_12_0/.

OpenViBE

OpenVibe is a piece of software that includes the (difficult to find) MobiLab drivers and the ability to host an LSL stream (see Communication between processes for more information about LSL streams). The software (that includes the MobiLab drivers) can be found here: http://openvibe.inria.fr/pub/bin/win32/. We used version 1.1.0. After installing this version, you can install newer versions of OpenVibe as well, while the MobiLab drivers remain. We did this to be able to run the OpenVibe scenario (it's OpenVibe's own kind of script) headless, so you don't need to run the editor software.

In order to use OpenVibe, you need to launch the OpenVibe server software, choose the MobiLab driver, set the COM port the MobiLab is connected to (can be found in the device manager of your operating system), run the OpenVibe server and then run the OpenVibe scenario. The OpenVibe scenario is the script that parses the EEG data from the OpenVibe server and sends it through an LSL stream.