Why Dundee?
The booking came in on a Tuesday afternoon. A client in Tayside needed a private P300 EEG test — a relationship case, the details of which remain confidential — and could not travel south due to work commitments. The nearest location we had previously tested in was Glasgow, over 80 miles away. The client needed the test within the week.
This was exactly the scenario we had been preparing for. Our UK-wide coverage promise means that we go to the client, not the other way around. We had tested the mobile kit extensively in controlled environments. We had run mock sessions in hotel meeting rooms and business centres across the north of England. But Dundee would be the first live, real-stakes test conducted in Scotland — with a real client, a real result, and real consequences.
We confirmed the appointment for Friday morning, booked a private meeting room at a business centre in Dundee city centre, and started planning.
What We Packed — The Mobile Testing Kit
One of the advantages of P300 EEG over traditional polygraph is the simplicity of the hardware. A polygraph requires a chair with straps, chest pneumographs, a blood pressure cuff, galvanic skin response sensors, and a dedicated analogue or digital recording unit. Our entire setup fits in a single carry case.
BrainBit Headset
8-channel dry-electrode EEG. No gel, no skin prep. Bluetooth connection. Under 60g weight.
Stimulus Laptop
Calibrated display, pre-loaded stimulus presentation software, signal monitoring dashboard.
Response Pad
USB button device for target stimulus responses. Millisecond-accurate timing.
Analysis Software
Real-time signal quality monitoring, epoch segmentation, artefact detection, P300 extraction and our validated statistical model.
Backup Battery
Portable power supply. Full appointment can run on battery if mains power is unavailable or unreliable.
Consent & Documentation
Printed consent forms, information sheets, post-test resource cards. Same documentation as every appointment.
Total weight: under 4kg. Total setup time: under 10 minutes. That is the entire laboratory, packed into something you could carry onto a train. The BrainBit headset is the critical piece — its dry electrodes mean we do not need gel, syringes, conductive paste or any of the preparation materials that make traditional clinical EEG setups heavy and impractical for mobile work.
The Day — Hour by Hour
The Drive North
280 miles, M6 to M74 to A90. Left before dawn to arrive with time to spare. The kit travelled in a padded carry case on the back seat — not the boot — because temperature stability matters for the headset's Bluetooth module and battery. Four and a half hours to Dundee, one coffee stop near Lockerbie.
Checking the Room
Arrived at the business centre an hour before the appointment. The meeting room was on the second floor — quiet, private, LED lighting, no fluorescent tubes. This matters because fluorescent lighting operates at 50Hz, which sits within the EEG frequency range and can introduce noise into the recording. LED lighting does not have this problem.
Checked for sources of electromagnetic interference: no large server rooms nearby, no lifts adjacent to the wall, no industrial equipment in the building. Mobile phone signal was strong — which means potential Bluetooth interference — but the BrainBit operates on a dedicated BLE channel that handles this well in practice.
Room temperature: 21°C. Comfortable. No air conditioning hum — the unit was off. Background noise level: negligible. A quiet room in a quiet building on a quiet street. Ideal conditions.
Setting Up
Laptop on the table facing the subject's chair. Response pad connected and tested — confirmed millisecond-accurate button registration. BrainBit headset powered on and paired via Bluetooth. Signal monitoring dashboard launched. All 8 channels showing clean baseline with impedance values within acceptable range.
Ran a 60-second baseline recording with the headset resting on the table to check for environmental noise floor. Clean. No 50Hz line noise, no broadband interference. The room was electrically quiet.
Total setup time: 8 minutes from opening the carry case to "ready to receive client."
Welcome & Pre-Test Consultation
The client arrived on time. Visibly nervous — which is completely normal and, as we explain in our relationship testing guide, has absolutely no effect on the P300 result. Offered water, gave them a moment to settle, then began the pre-test consultation.
The consultation followed our standard protocol — detailed discussion of the specific situation, identification of the key details for the stimulus set, careful design of probe stimuli. This took 25 minutes. The stimulus set was finalised and the client was briefed on exactly what would happen during the test.
Consent form signed. No coercion indicators. Client was voluntary and informed. Proceeded to headset fitting.
Signal Quality Check
This was the moment of truth for mobile testing. In our regular venues, we know the rooms, we know the electrical environment, we know exactly how the headset behaves. In Dundee, in a room we had never used before, with a building's electrical infrastructure we did not control — would the signal hold?
Headset placed on the client's head. All 8 channels connected. Signal quality check:
- Channels 1–6: Clean signal, impedance within range, no artefact
- Channel 7 (T4): Slightly elevated impedance — minor adjustment to electrode position resolved it within 30 seconds
- Channel 8 (O2): Clean from first contact
All 8 channels passed our minimum signal quality threshold within 4 minutes of fitting. Identical performance to controlled-environment appointments. The mobile kit worked exactly as designed.
Stimulus Presentation
The oddball paradigm ran for 18 minutes. Target stimuli, neutral fillers and probe stimuli presented in randomised sequence. Client was attentive throughout — response pad accuracy was 98% on target items, indicating strong sustained attention.
No interruptions. No external noise events. No Bluetooth dropouts. The EEG recording ran continuously without a single data gap. 280 miles from base, in a room we had never set foot in before, and the data looked exactly like data from our regular venues.
Analysis & Result
Headset removed. Client moved to the waiting area with water and a post-test information card. Data processing began immediately using our standard pipeline: epoch segmentation, artefact rejection, averaging, P300 amplitude and latency extraction, statistical model.
Artefact rejection rate: 6.2% of epochs excluded — well within our acceptable range and consistent with our benchmark average of 5–8%. The remaining clean epochs produced clear, unambiguous averaged waveforms with strong signal-to-noise ratio across all channels.
Result determined. Verbal result delivered to the client at 12:25pm. Written report sent by secure email within 18 hours.
The Data — Dundee vs Controlled Environment
The whole point of this field report is to answer one question honestly: does mobile testing produce the same quality of data as a fixed-location appointment? Here are the key metrics from the Dundee test compared to our controlled-environment benchmarks.
Every metric met or exceeded our controlled-environment benchmarks. The P300 amplitude measurements were clean, the latency values fell within the expected 300–500ms window for the P300b component, and the statistical model produced a determination with confidence above our minimum threshold.
The conclusion is straightforward: the mobile kit, deployed in a venue we had never previously used, 280 miles from our base, produced data that was indistinguishable in quality from our controlled-environment appointments. The science does not care where the room is. It cares that the room is quiet, the electrodes have contact, and the subject is attending to the stimuli. Everything else is logistics.
Lessons Learned — What We Will Do Differently
The Dundee test was a success by every measurable standard. But "it worked" is not the same as "nothing could be improved." Here is what we took away from the experience.
Pre-Visit Venue Vetting Is Essential
We inspected the room an hour before the appointment. In future, we will request venue photos and a brief video call with the venue manager at least 48 hours in advance — specifically to check lighting type (LED vs fluorescent), proximity to lifts and server rooms, and background noise levels. Arriving early still matters, but pre-vetting reduces risk.
Carry a Backup Headset
We brought one BrainBit headset. It performed perfectly — but if it had failed, the appointment would have been cancelled and the client would have wasted their morning. For any appointment requiring travel over 100 miles, we now carry a second headset in the kit as a contingency. The cost of a backup unit is trivial compared to the cost of failing a client.
Temperature Matters in Transit
The headset battery and Bluetooth module are rated for 0–40°C operation. In a January Scottish dawn, the car interior started below 0°C. We kept the kit on the back seat and ran the heater from departure — but a dedicated insulated carry case would be better practice for winter mobile work.
Allow More Buffer Time for Travel
We arrived an hour early and it was enough. But road conditions in Scotland can be unpredictable — single carriageway sections, weather delays, diversions. For future Scottish appointments, we will build in a 90-minute buffer minimum rather than 60. Arriving stressed helps nobody.
What This Means for UK-Wide Coverage
The Dundee test was not just an appointment — it was a proof of concept. It confirmed that our mobile testing capability is production-ready for anywhere in the UK.
We now regularly conduct mobile tests across England, Scotland and Wales. Our coverage includes — but is not limited to:
- London and the South East
- Manchester, Liverpool and the North West
- Birmingham and the Midlands
- Leeds, Sheffield and Yorkshire
- Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen
- Cardiff, Bristol, Newcastle, Brighton and beyond
If you are in a location not listed, call us on 0161 524 5513. If there is a quiet room and a power socket, we can test there. The data from Dundee proved it. The science travels.
The question was never "can the technology work outside a lab?" The BrainBit headset was designed for real-world use. The question was whether we could maintain our quality assurance standards in an unfamiliar environment, hundreds of miles from our usual setup. Dundee answered that question. The answer is yes.
Need a Test Wherever You Are? We Come to You.
P300 EEG testing from £499 — available across the entire UK. Same mobile kit. Same 95% accuracy. Same quality assurance standards. Appointments typically available within 24–72 hours.