Streaming realtime data from Modular EEG (aka OpenEEG)

This page describes the interface between the 2-6 channel Modular EEG amplifier of the OpenEEG project and the FieldTrip buffer.

Standalone program modeeg2ft/modeeg2ft_2chn

We provide two standalone tools (see “realtime/src/acquisition/modeeg” and “realtime/bin”) to grab data from the serial port, and stream it to a FieldTrip buffer. The first one is called modeeg2ft and allows to specify which channels to stream and save in a configuration file like this:

[select]
1=Left
2=Right

You would then call the application like this:

modeeg2ft COM5: config.txt  nameOfGDF  localhost  1972

where “COM5:” is the serial port on which the amplifier is connected (use something like “/dev/ttyS0” on Linux), “config.txt” is the name of the configuration file, “nameOfGDF” is the name of the GDF file where data should be saved to (extension “.gdf” will be added automatically), and “localhost” and “1972” are the address and port number of the buffer server (actually, these are the defaults for the last two arguments, so you can leave them out). In case you want to have the buffer server inside this application, replace the hostname by a minus (-).

The second tool is called modeeg2ft_2chn and is basically a simplification of modeeg2ft: For this, always two channels are read, and there is no need for a configuration file. Just call for example

modeeg2ft_2chn COM5:  nameOfGDF  localhost  1972

If you don’t want to save data to GDF, you can replace the second argument (“nameOfGdf”) by a minus (-).

Compilation

On the command line, change to the “realtime/datasource/modeeg” directory and type “make”. The Makefile will also work with the MinGW compiler on Windows. Note that you might need to compile the libbuffer library first.

Support for macOS

Using a USB cable

If your ModEEG uses the FT232RL USB-to-serial converter, you may have to install a driver to access it.

First check

ls -al /dev/*usbserial*

If that is empty, download and install the driver from http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm. After that, you should see

powermac> ls -al /dev/*usbserial*
crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel   10,   5 Feb 27 16:16 /dev/cu.usbserial-A9003PV6
crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel   10,   4 Feb 27 16:13 /dev/tty.usbserial-A9003PV6

Using Bluetooth

The device that we have at the Donders has a “BlueSmirf FireFly” bluetooth interface. To use it, go to “setup Bluetooth device” in the menu bar. After switching on the amplifier, you will see a FireFly-B106 device. Connect to the device using the passcode 1234. After that you can connect the modeeg2ft application to the serial port at /dev/tty.FireFly-B106.

powermac> ls -al /dev/tty.FireFly*
crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel   10,   4 Jan 24 12:54 /dev/tty.FireFly-B106-SPP

Native MATLAB implementation

On Linux and macOS it is also possible to read from a serial port or bluetooth interface from within MATLAB. To help in decoding the communication protocol, i.e. the byte stream that is sent over the serial interface, we also made a MATLAB implementation.

The MATLAB implementation can be found in ft_realtime_modeegproxy. It reads the data from the serial interface and copies the first two channels to a FieldTrip buffer.

Serial port communication protocol

The page http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/modeeg/firmware/modeeg-p2.c describes the communication protocol as follows

// Packet Format Version 2
// 17-byte packets are transmitted from the ModularEEG at 256Hz,
// using 1 start bit, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, 57600 bits per second.
// Minimial transmission speed is 256Hz _ sizeof(modeeg_packet) _ 10 = 43520 bps.

 struct modeeg_packet {
    uint8_t sync0; // = 0xA5
    uint8_t sync1; // = 0x5A
    uint8_t version; // = 2
    uint8_t count; // packet counter. Increases by 1 each packet
    uint16_t data[6]; // 10-bit sample (= 0 - 1023) in big endian (Motorola) format
    uint8_t switches; // State of PD5 to PD2, in bits 3 to 0
};

// Note that data is transmitted in big-endian format.
// By this measure together with the unique pattern in sync0 and sync1 it is guaranteed,
// that re-sync (i.e after disconnecting the data line) is always safe.

External links

• http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/