[open] input from two keyboards

mfairhurst

Dear OpenSesame team,

I am setting up an experiment in which a pair of interacting individuals must input their responses (2 consecutive ratings) by either keyboard input (I suppose a key response) or mouse input (I could even use a form in this case). Is there a way two allow for two such inputs a) to be received and stored from two separate keyboards connected to one PC running the Opensesame programme and b) to then present these two ratings (selectively - i.e. partner A rating to B and partner B rating to A?) in the form of feedback to two monitors? My suspicion is that while the former may be doable the latter (especially selectively displaying feedback) is more tricky /impossible. The alternative for the latter is to have two monitors displaying the same content but selectively masking some of it with a curtain or something (one side visible for A and one side visible to . Similarly, for potential mouse input, is there a way to create a form with two columns of choices (one column viewable by A and the other by but two cursors driven by two separate mouse?

Thanking you in advance for your kind help,

Best wishes,

Merle

Edwin

Hi Merle,

Sounds like an interesting project! I'm afraid it's going to be a bit more complicated than simply plugging in multiple displays and keyboards, though. The main problem is that multiple computer mice and keyboards plugged in on the same PC usually control the same cursor and text input. You can see what happens when you plug in two mice into the same PC, and move both around: chaos ensues!

A solution to this, would be to use two PCs that can communicate with each other via an ethernet cable. In Python, this is relatively easy to do, but will require some Python literacy (that is: it's easy in comparison to other programming languages, but it will be hard for a non-programmer). This thread hints at this, as does this one (with some example code!).

Alternatively, you could go for a slightly different approach with two keyboards on one PC, where you only use a selection of the keys on keyboard 1, and a different selection of keys on keyboard 2. In this way, you can differentiate between the keyboards by the input (although participants could still press the keys corresponding to the other persons keyboard, to make it seem as though the other participant responded).

The display thing is actually quite easy to solve. Suppose you use two monitors with a 1024x768 resolution. The total resolution of both displays is 2048x768, of which the 1-1024 (pixels in width) corresponds with the first display and 1025-2048 with the second. Of course, when you use two separate PCs, each one has its own dedicated monitor.

Good luck!

Edwin