Expertise

Telemetry

  • Wireless sensors and stimulators.
  • Implantable and head-mounting.
  • Continuous recording of biopotentials.
  • Cohabiting, freely-moving animals.
  • High fidelity recordings.
  • Free software, export to other formats.
  • Automatic event detection.
  • Synchronous video for behavioral studies.

Alignment

  • Particle detector alignment.
  • Particle accelerator alignment.
  • Large geometric monitoring systems.
  • Alignment of highly-reflecting objects.
  • Fiber positioners for astronomy.
  • Calibration of cameras and targets.
  • Instrument manufacture and testing.

Data Acquisition

  • Laboratory systems with dozens of devices.
  • Large systems with thousands of devices.
  • Control and acquisition over TCP/IP.
  • Hardware easy to adapt, open-source.
  • Software runs on all platforms, open-source.
  • Analysis, export, and upload of results.
  • Supports metrology, telemetry, and video.

Consulting and Design

  • Project feasiblity and cost
  • Progress assessments
  • Electronic circuit design
  • Printed circuit board layout
  • Electronic and mechanical assembly
  • Precision measurement with CMM
  • Software design and testing

In addition to our production and manufacturing work, Open Source Instruments (OSI) also provides design services, expert advice, analysis, and technical support, and consultations related to electrical systems. The founder and president of OSI, Kevan Hashemi, has thirty years of electrical engineering experience. Under his management, the Brandeis University Physics Department manufactured thousands of survey cameras for the ATLAS End-Cap Alignment System that have been operating reliably for the past ten years at CERN. At OSI, Kevan designed our implantable telemetry system fifteen years ago, and the company now ships over five hundred implantable devices per year.

OSI has extensive experience designing accurate and effective instruments for the scientific community, and managing their mass production for large experiments. We designed and built our own data acquisition system, Long-Wire Data Acquisition, which is used by both our high-energy physics and neuroscience customers. Additionally, we have designed and manufactured over twenty unique telemetry devices for neuroscience research. For more information on our design and production work at OSI, please visit our products page.

In the past fifteen years, OSI manufactured hundreds of BCAM's devices for high energy physics experiments. The company founders designed and built the Wire Position Sensor (WPS) in 2008, and has since supplied dozens of these devices to CERN in geneva and NSRL in china. High energy physics instrumentation remains an important part of the company's business. Open Source Instruments has the recipient of three SBIR Phase I grants to date, although we no longer persue government funding in any form.

Shortly after its inception, the company began a partnership with epilepsy researchers at University College London Institute of Neurology (UCL ION) to collaboratively design a fully-implantable, telemetry system for recording intracranial electro­encephalogram (iEEG) in mice and rats for epilepsy research. Funding for the collaboration was provided by UCL. Beginning in 2010, after the publication of our first paper describing the system, production and sale telemetry devices has been responsible for most of our revenue. In 2020 we sold five hundred such devices for $500 each to dozens of medical research groups. In 2024 we sold over one thousand such devices for $600 each to corporate and academic customers worldwide.