Does anyone have used Psycho Py and any device from Neulog Sensors?

Builder
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OS(MAC OS High Sierra 10.13.5):
PsychoPy version (2 PY3):

Hi, I have a very simple task, where I will present images and sounds for a participant. It would be necessary to measure their electrodermal activity during this task. To this end, I am using a Neulog NUL -217 GSR logger sensor.

The only point I am struggling with the task in Psycho Py is that I need to send a trigger at the moment of the image is presented to Neulog Software that records the GSR response. Does anyone developed something like this and could give a hint on how to set up these triggers?

Thanks so much!!!

Best,

João

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What does the manual for your Neulog software say about what sort of trigger protocol it expects?

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Hello Michael,

First, I am so sorry for my delayed response, I had some healthy issues.

The manual from neulog, mentions an API that specifies how any software should interact with NeuLog sensors. The API is based on HTTP protocol and can be accessed from any software like C, C++, Python, JS, Java and many more. Also, Microsoft WordTM and AcrobatTM can be used to control the sensors.

Once they use Python, do you think it is possible to use the code in psycho py to interact with their software and their device?

I am searching more information. There are two softwares in the website, one is to develop very restricted experiments and this one shows a graph of the GSR measure. The other one is the API, there is a sample that opens in the browser (I think it is correct once it is an HTTP protocol) however I tried to include some commands there and it didn’t seem to work. What would be important to my experiment is just to have some triggers, that mark the moment of presentation of the stimuli that is happening in psychopy in the Neulog software, or even if the Psychopy could assess and register the values from the device.

If anyone have a clue it would be really helpful.

Thanks a lot!

Joao

PS: I found something in GitHub, that is a python neulog. https://github.com/thearn/pyneulog/commit/b9846dcd8d468f9d141c9dc519b5b1a325cd8d94

There are some commands like

from neulog import gsr

Based on your experience in psychopy, do you think something like this could work, or some software just written in phython should be necessary?

Thanks again! Sorry for bothering!

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A Python library would be ideal: you could just make it available to PsychoPy and then access its functions as required. But looking at the pyneulog library that you linked to, that communicates via a direct serial port connection rather than over a network via HTTP. So you would need to find out if your system supports being controlled via a serial cable.

If so, you could use the pyneulog library, but it isn’t ideal for using from within Builder, as it embeds some pauses when it sends or checks messages that would potentially interfere with Builder’s timing cycle. It might just be best to extract the relevant code and use it to communicate via PsychoPy’s own serial port API.

But if you can find a Python library that communicates with this hardware over the network (i.e. HTTP), that may be better still.

1 Like
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Hi Michael, I researched some libraries in Psychopy that could do as you suggested, and it seems that psychopy.serial would be able to work with neulog devices, and the serial works even if the device is connected by an USB port.

When I tried to look for psychopy.serial, I am directed to pyserial. If I import this library into the program I am developing in psychopy I could use exactly the same commands described in pyserial?

What I need is really basic, is just that when some image is presented in PsychoPy for the duration of the image, psychopy take the data registered by the device.

Thank you very much again!

Best,

João

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Perhaps start by looking at this recent thread from someone using serial commands to communicate with an EEG:

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Thank you very much Michael!

I will try it tonight!

Thanks a lot!