Is it possible to record finger movements (position, time) from iPad?

Online experiments
1

Hi everyone,

I require to record the finger movements produced on an iPad via Pavlovia, and get the exact position and the time at which this position was recorded (every frame).
Is this possible, and if so, how can I do that?

best regards,

Christian

2

It should be possible. I would start here: Pavlovia experiments on Tablet? Dissertation help needed

3

Hi Jonathan,

thank you very much!

I had a look at the example provided in this thread.
As far as I understand, they just used a regular mouse to record the touches on the mobile device.
Could this be true? Is the input also the mouse for the ipad, as it is for the laptop and desktop PC?

best regards,

Christian

4

Hi @Christian_Leukel
It is not clear to me what you mean with the above. Is it where the fingers are touching on (clicking) the screen or how the finger moved while e.g. dragging an item over the screen and you want to record the path they followed?

I have just finished creating an exp that records the items selected and the slots they are dropped. And certainly it is doable to record the path the fingers followed. This exp has a bit of coding in the background - I use an older version of PsychoPy so maybe the latest version have these features built-in.

I am afraid I cannot share the exp itself but I can share the link to the exp - this is for demo only and to show that it can be done either using a mouse or your fingers on a touch screen.

Just click on the bubble for instructions. If you did the right thing the item will snap to the right location and move to the next trial.

https://run.pavlovia.org/Yiannis_A/director_taskv7

5

Dear Yiannis,

thanks for your quick reply.

in my experiment the subjects move on the screen with their finger for 10 seconds.

Every frame, I want to record the position of the finger, during this 10 seconds period.

No dragging of object, just recording the paths they move during these 10 seconds.

I just want to know what kind of code is required so that the paths is recorded.
Do you use a mouse from the psychopy builder to record the paths, or did you code something to record the paths?
In case it’s the latter, could you share the code snippet that you used for recording the finger paths?

best,

Christian

6

You are basically recording the position of the mouse on each frame. You could append mouse.getPos() to a list and save the list. That’s probably better than having a new row or column every frame.

7

Hi wakecarter, so it’s just setting up a mouse component and adding code to get the mouse position every frame and save it to a list?! It’s that easy? Cheers, Christian

8

I think trajtracker is a better way.
https://trajtracker.wixsite.com/trajtracker

9

Please could you expand on that. How is it different/better?