Board Setup

Board IDs

Each NeuroPawn board has its own BrainFlow board ID:

Board	Board ID
Knight Board (standard)	BoardIds.NEUROPAWN_KNIGHT_BOARD
Knight Board IMU	BoardIds.NEUROPAWN_KNIGHT_BOARD_IMU

Use the IMU board ID to access accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer channels alongside EEG data. If you use the standard ID with an IMU board, the motion channels will not be accessible.

---

BrainFlowInputParams

BrainFlowInputParams is the configuration object passed to BoardShim at initialisation. For NeuroPawn boards the two relevant fields are:

Field	Description
serial_port	The COM port or device path the board is connected to (e.g. "COM3" on Windows, "/dev/ttyACM0" on Linux, "/dev/cu.*" on macOS).
other_info	Optional JSON string for board-level settings. Use to set a global gain override (default 12).

from brainflow.board_shim import BoardShim, BrainFlowInputParams, BoardIds

params = BrainFlowInputParams()
params.serial_port = "COM3"
params.other_info = '{"gain": 12}'  # optional; values: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12

board = BoardShim(BoardIds.NEUROPAWN_KNIGHT_BOARD, params)

Note

The gain value in other_info must match the gain you send in your chon_ commands. The global gain sets the BrainFlow scaling factor used when converting raw ADC counts to microvolts — if they differ, your microvolt values will be incorrect.

---

Channels Must Be Activated After Streaming Starts

Caution

Both the Knight Board and the Knight Board IMU do not output EEG data until you explicitly enable each channel by sending chon_ commands after calling start_stream(). The board begins transmitting packets automatically on power-up, but all channels are off by default — you will see a flat or empty signal until they are turned on.

Always insert blocking pauses between commands. The board processes each command in its next firmware loop cycle and will silently drop commands that arrive too quickly. See the Command Set for timing details.

The standard startup sequence after start_stream():

import time

board.start_stream(450000)
time.sleep(2)                          # wait for the board to stabilise

for ch in range(1, 9):
    time.sleep(0.5)
    board.config_board(f"chon_{ch}_12")   # enable channel at gain 12
    time.sleep(1)
    board.config_board(f"rldadd_{ch}")    # add to RLD network
    time.sleep(0.5)

This applies to both NEUROPAWN_KNIGHT_BOARD and NEUROPAWN_KNIGHT_BOARD_IMU.