BCI Framework introduction

System architecture

BCI Framework system architecture diagram

Server, Broker and Peers

Server

To use BCI Framework a single instance of Server must be started on each host you are planning to run the experiment on.

Server is started with obci srv command.

Server is responsible for:

  • managing experiments and peers from other experiments running on its machine
  • autodiscovery of other BCI Framework experiments running on the same VLAN
  • detection of amplifiers connected to host and broadcasting this information to other Servers
Broker

Broker is started once per experiment. Broker acts as a message proxy for peers in a single experiment.

Every Peer connects to Broker on initialization.

Peer

Peer is a worker unit, which communicates with other running peers and Broker.

Peer can be started with obci run_peer peer.py command, but it is strongly recommended to start peers automatically, as a part of experiment.

Typical examples of peers are:

  • EEG signal amplifiers
  • EEG signal filters
  • signal displays

Each peer has its own configuration file. It stores necessary parameters and defines dependencies on other peers in the system.

Experiment

To perform some useful work you need to create and run an experiment.

Experiment is a set of running Peers and a Broker. Each peer can be identified by its assigned peer_id, thus allowing for launching multiple instances of the same peer.

Peer IDs, peer program paths and peer configurations are predefined in experiment definition file or scenario file*.

Experiment definition file is a text file for defining an experiment. It contains a list of peers, assignments of peer_id and paths to peer configurations.