April 1, 2003

Tech Update – The gadget requests are answered

Author: Kurt Othmer

Wednesday, - pre-setup at AAPB.
Siegfried Othmer and I caught our flight yesterday from Los Angeles to the AAPB conference here in Jacksonville Florida. This after Siegfried just got back from Cleveland the day before. Today was the rough switch into east coast time for me, but it was worth the price, because what we had in store for us was Thought Tech’s official unveiling of their new Procomp amplifier, the Infinity.

Thought Tech had arranged a special briefing for those of us who are going to be representing this product, as well as a meeting oriented more for clinicians that have played a special role in advising Thought Tech on their developments. I arrived to find Toby from Thought Technology and a small group of other tech guys like myself, some of whom I knew, and several were new faces. The LCD projector was running on the screen in the front of the room with some moving graphics. And all along one wall of the room was glass, overlooking the river that runs right out front of our hotel, with the very bright sun reflecting in on us—a delightful distraction that also serves to reset the circadian rhythms. It took me a moment to realize that the product I was seeing on the LCD projector at the front of the room was in fact the new Procomp Infinity. I had heard that it had been completely redesigned, along with a new look. I guess my wild imagination had envisioned something a little more space-age. But it sure is different from the old Procomp+.

The new Procomp Infinity has the same clean compact Thought Technology design that we have come to expect in most of the stuff they produce. But it’s really the improvements inside that grabbed my attention. In this new incarnation of the Procomp+, Thought Technology has clearly sought to meet two goals. The first is to answer the requests from Procomp+ users for improvements on the old model, and the second is to add some new capabilities. The first major feature in the first “fix it” category is the recessed fiber optic port. Doing tech support in the field for three years now myself, I have heard many stories about the hyper active kid who somehow, accidentally, or not so accidentally launches a Procomp the length of the room. A surprising number of Procomps actually survive this abuse, although I don’t enourage g-tests. If the Procomp does meet its end when used as a football, it is often because the fiber optic plug can get snapped off. The new Procomp has dealt with this by recessing the protruding connector in the body of the case. Additionally the optical fiber is now launched sideways from the unit rather than coming off the front. This side facing placement of the fiber cable seems like it will fit much better in most offices, moving the cable off to the side, instead of having it in the front to get tangled up with the electrodes. Next, to keep it seated where you left it, new rubber feet on the bottom of the device will stop the Procomp from doing its own traveling.

I did notice that now the battery case is a little harder to open. On the plus side, the dip switches have been moved to the outside of the case from inside the battery compartment. They are still recessed, so that they are not going to be accidentally reset, but they are now substantial enough that one can operate the rocker switches with the deft touch of a fingernail, and not only with a pencil point as designed. The new tighter battery case will not fall open like the last one, and even if the case did come off, the batteries are now inside the unit, not off in their own removable compartment. So an open battery case does not stop operation like the last Procomp. And, while I’m on batteries, new internal hardware in the Procomp Infinity is apparently better designed to support rechargeables. I just learned today that the original Procomp + is not really designed to handle rechargeables, but the Procomp Infinity takes into consideration the slightly smaller size on rechargeable batteries, and can even recover from a momentary loss in battery connection. It will more accurately report remaining battery life of rechargeable batteries. Rechargeables have the problem that the voltage drops precipitously near the end of charge as opposed to declining gracefully.

Another improvement is that impedance checking is now built into the Procomp Infinity. You still need to use the Thought Technology “Z” sensor, but you can then put the amp into impedance checking mode, where it will stay until you turn it back to regular mode. All this is done with the power button, which you hold down for various time intervals. To power on the Procomp Infinity takes a one second hold on the power button. Having this be a full one second prevents any problems due to inadvertent bumps of the power switch. A three-second hold engages the impedance checking function. A ten-second hold on the power button will actually re-calibrate the amp to take the conditions at your location into consideration. And for those of you who also use the peripheral biofeedback modalities, it will interest you to know that the Procomp Infinity can now identify what sensors are connected to it.

Looking towards the future, the Procomp Infinity has added some new features such as USB support. Anyone who has shopped for a portable computer lately knows that it can be difficult to find one these days that still has a serial port on the back for the Pro-SB to plug into. The new TTUSB will plug into your USB port, and connect to your fiber cable, and can actually support up to four amps all on one computer. That is intended to support research applications, but perhaps this sets the stage for group neurofeedback!?

Then there is the compact flash card. There is a slot in the back of the Procomp Infinity that accepts an off-the-shelf model compact flash card. This allows you to record ambulatory data, and move it to the computer later. The drawback of this sort of recording is that you don’t really know how good your signal is while you are recording, and you only get to find that out later when you play back the data.

Finally, the new Procomp Infinity supports a new sampling rate of 2048 samples per second on the first two sensors, and a rate of 256/sec on the remaining six channels. The fast sampling allows you to get EMG signals as well as EEG signals with full bandwidth.