For decades, high-density non-invasive neuroimaging has been locked behind a massive barrier to entry. Capturing 64, 128, or 192 channels of clean EEG or EMG typically meant tethering a subject to a stationary amplifier rack, routing bundles of shielded cables across a room, and spending upwards of $50,000 on proprietary clinical hardware.
At PiEEG, we are building toward a different future: accessible, modular, non-invasive high-density biosignal acquisition that is completely wireless, runs in the browser, and scales at a fraction of traditional lab costs.
Today, we are taking a major step toward that vision with the release of Kraken Link—and opening up our engineering roadmap for 128 to 192+ wireless channels.
Step One: 48 Wireless Channels with Kraken Link
Kraken Link is now live in PiEEG Cloud. It turns a single Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-S3 into a dedicated Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) aggregator capable of bridging up to three Octopus-16 boards simultaneously over a single high-speed USB connection.
Instead of managing separate Bluetooth pairings on your host computer, Kraken Link merges three 16-channel nodes into one unified stream:
- 48 wireless biosignal channels (3 × Octopus-16 boards)
- 24-bit ADC resolution at 250 Hz sampling across every channel
- Single USB-C receiver streaming at 921,600 baud directly into PiEEG Cloud
- Browser-based setup — flash the Kraken receiver firmware directly from your browser in seconds with zero desktop toolchain required
In a matter of minutes, researchers and developers can move from a single 16-channel wearable to a 48-channel wireless array for full-scalp EEG mapping, high-density cortico-muscular coherence, or multi-limb EMG decoding.
Why Three Boards per Receiver? The Physics of BLE Airtime
A question we hear often is: why cap a single Kraken Link receiver at three Octopus-16 boards?
The boundary isn't software—it's RF scheduling. Each Octopus-16 board transmits 16 channels of 24-bit samples at 250 Hz, pushing a data packet across the air every 4 milliseconds. When three boards stream concurrently, a single ESP32-S3 radio is interleaving 750 packets per second while maintaining connection intervals, acknowledgments, and Wi-Fi/BLE coexistence margin.
Three simultaneous Octopus-16 connections hit the reliable operating sweet spot of a single ESP32-S3 radio—giving you rock-solid 48-channel acquisition without dropped frames or latency spikes.
The Roadmap to 128–192+ Non-Invasive Wireless Channels
Stopping at 48 channels was never the plan. Non-invasive source localization, dense motor-unit decomposition, and hyperscanning experiments demand 128 channels and beyond. Because our architecture is modular from the ground up, scaling past the single-radio ceiling means parallelizing the RF front-end.
We are actively prototyping three hardware architectures to reach 128 to 192+ wireless channels:
1. Multi-Kraken USB Array
The most immediate path: plug three independent Kraken Link receivers into a single host machine. Each ESP32-S3 manages its own dedicated trio of Octopus-16 boards, while PiEEG Cloud fuses the serial streams into one unified, high-density multichannel workspace.
2. Raspberry Pi Multi-BLE Hub
A standalone edge acquisition box powered by a Raspberry Pi driving multiple dedicated BLE controllers (hci0, hci1, hci2). By isolating radio scheduling across independent controllers, the hub aggregates all nodes locally and broadcasts a synchronized stream into PiEEG Cloud or Lab Streaming Layer (LSL) over the network.
3. All-in-One Multi-Radio Base Station
A purpose-built desktop receiver PCB housing three to four dedicated BLE radios with hardware-level sync lines on a single board. One USB-C cable to your workstation, zero USB hub clutter, and up to 192 wireless channels out of the box.
The Next Frontier: Synchronization at Scale
When you scale a distributed wireless array past 100 channels, the core engineering challenge shifts away from raw BLE bandwidth. The real frontier is timing precision:
- Cross-device sample alignment across independent crystal oscillators
- Continuous clock-drift compensation over long recording sessions
- Deterministic packet aggregation so every channel shares a true common timeline
Solving tight synchronization across inexpensive, modular wireless nodes is the key to making 128-channel non-invasive neurotechnology available to every university lab, startup, and independent researcher.
Try Kraken Link Today & Shape What Comes Next
You can test 48-channel wireless aggregation right now. Grab an ESP32-S3, flash the aggregator firmware in your browser, and power on your Octopus-16 boards.
Connect Kraken-48 to the PiEEG Cloud →
We're building the next stage of high-density wireless hardware with our community. Which architecture fits your lab workflow best—a Multi-Kraken USB array, a Raspberry Pi network hub, or a single-cable Multi-Radio Base Station? Join the discussion in our Community.
