Backyard brains started out producing low cost, portable, electrophysiology systems to bring neuroscience to classrooms and help promote it.
“Backyard brains wants to be for neuroscience, what the telescope is for astronomers” – meaning that the idea is that with a couple of hundred dollars anyone can get one of these recording systems and start doing experiments, like amateur astronomers can buy telescopes and start observing the cosmos.
World Wide Series Seminar Open Ephys is a great initiative to create a suite that encompasses hardware for LFP and spiking recording, optogenetics combined with custom written software for microstimulation, environmental stimuli, extracellular recording and optogen.