Assembly Guide

This section will guide you through the steps necessary to build as many Open Ephys acquisition boards as you need. The amount of time and money invested will vary depending on your approach, but it’s unlikely that you’ll end up devoting more than 2-3 days of work and $1000 per board. Please correct us if these numbers differ from the amount of time/money you actually spend!

There are two general approaches:

• Assemble it yourself. This is recommended if you want to end up with fewer than 5 boards, and you have some experience building and troubleshooting electronics. Formal engineering training is not at all necessary, but it might turn out to be frustrating if this is your first electronics project ever.

• Outsource the assembly. This is recommended if you want to build 5 or more boards. It’s not really cost effective to build fewer boards this way, but you could do it. This approach doesn’t require any technical expertise—it just involves ordering some supplies and coordinating with a fabrication company, such as Advanced Circuits.

We’ve done both with great results.

For the instructions in this section, we’ll make it clear which steps are only necessary if you’re building the board yourself, or only if you’re outsourcing the assembly process.