OpenSesame Android File

Candice

Hi!

I'm working with a file on a tablet. The file that keeps breaking (stopping at random times and closing Opensesame) but only on tablets (not on computers). I tried several and several times but I can't figure out why. It breaks in different parts and not at all consistently. The fact that sometimes it works perfectly (gets all the way through the file) makes me think that it's not a mistake but rather something that's overloading the tablet.

I've used bigger files on the tablet without a problem, so I'm not sure what it might be. I included a link to the file. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

https://osf.io/3re5d/?view_only=1a72a900341448fdbd3c278ee127b5f4

Thank you so much!

sebastiaan

Hi Candice,

If you open /sdcard/opensesame-debug.txt, what do you see? Do you see a Python stacktrace (i.e. an error message) and if so what is it? If there is a stacktrace, then the problem will probably be quite easy to debug.

• http://osdoc.cogsci.nl/3.1/manual/android/#debugging

If there is no stracktrace, that means that the Python interpreter crashes, which has been known to happen on Android tablets. I haven't been able to figure out when and why exactly, but I suspect that in some cases memory isn't properly freed and the tablet therefore runs out of memory. There is very little that you can do about it, because it's a problem in the underlying implementation of PyGame. (Or at least that's what I think.)

Does the crash always occur near the end of the experiment?

Cheers,
Sebastiaan

Candice

Hi Sebastiaan,

I feel very silly... I didn't think of looking in the debugging file. I think what's happening is that sometimes the tablet gets slow and the timeout goes 5-10 ms over what it should be, so it makes the timeout on the next part (which is 2000 minus the time from the screen before) negative, which breaks it.

I think if I reduce the time on that screen it should fix it.

Thank you so much!