3 votes

Inexpensive, reusable electrodes for EMG

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  1. pseudolobster
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    A brief search seems to imply EMG, EEG, and ECG/EKG all use the same electrodes. Typically it looks like most are disposable, single-use items, probably for hygiene reasons and also because they...

    A brief search seems to imply EMG, EEG, and ECG/EKG all use the same electrodes. Typically it looks like most are disposable, single-use items, probably for hygiene reasons and also because they come pre-gelled.

    I worked on an EEG project a couple years ago, and came across a few DIY projects. The one I can find off-hand is called OpenBCI, and they have a shop where they sell the usual disposable electrodes (here) as well as these gold cup ones. I seemed to recall them having a community forum or some kind of DIY guide to these things, but the best I can find is this, which is just links to their shop. In any case, there exists a DIY community of brainwave enthusiasts, who use what I think are compatible electrodes.

    Anyway they don't seem to be any cheaper than commercial suppliers. On that site I was able to find silver chloride electrodes that look a lot like the ones in your pic.

    From what I can gather, it seems like these electrodes don't need to be particularly sophisticated, and you could probably get by with speaker wires taped to the body. The real challenge I guess would be compensating for the electrical properties of whatever probes you use. Surely these things have a known resistance, inductance, capacitance, etc, which makes them easy to calibrate for in software.

    2 votes