Open Sesame Runtime for Android

StudentLeipzig

Dear Sebastiaan and members,

my name is Frederik and I am part of a research project called "RIcult" at the university of Leipzig. We would like to use OpenSesame for the intercultural part of our research but it is not working. Let me explain our problem.

First the technical facts:

• Tablet: Samsung Galaxy Tab A6 (1.6GHz Octa Core Processor; 2GB RAM)
• Androidversion: 7.0 (Nougat)

And now some further explanation:
We created an experiment on a windows computer and on the computer the experiment runs perfectly. Furthermore we also used the droid-backend - so that should be alright.

Then we downloaded the Opensesame-app on our tablet and copied the opensesame experiment to an sdcard. So everything should be fine. But when we open the app and typing in the folder which contains our experiment it cannot be found. - That is the first problem.

But nevertheless opensesame finds an example experiment called "gaze cuing". When we now try to start this one open sesame crashes after asking for the subject number. - So it is not possible to run even the example experiment on our tablet.

For your better understanding I took a video of the screen which you can find here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QmMaeuuKPBcugnvXlxYUG_uaCvAzNAL0/view?usp=sharing

Moreover I found a debug file on the tablet saying:
/sdcard/opensesame-autorun.yml
/mnt/sdcard/opensesame-autorun.yml
Launching opensesame_resources/android/menu.osexp
openexp.sampler._legacy.init_sound(): sampling freq = 48000, buffer size = 1024
experiment.run(): experiment started at Mon Apr 9 10:58:05 2018
experiment.run(): disabling garbage collection
opened /sdcard/opensesame-settings.txt for reading
experiment_folder = /sdcard/
logfile_folder = /sdcard/
opened /sdcard/opensesame-settings.txt for writing
experiment.run(): experiment finished at Mon Apr 9 10:58:41 2018
experiment.end(): enabling garbage collection
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "opensesame/main.py", line 111, in main
File "opensesame/libopensesame/experiment.py", line 138, in init
File "opensesame/libopensesame/item.py", line 64, in init
File "opensesame/libopensesame/experiment.py", line 343, in from_string
File "opensesame/libopensesame/item_store.py", line 164, in new
osexception:
Failed to load plugin 'form_text_display'

item-stack:
exception type: ImportError
exception message: No module named items.qtautoplugin
time: Mon Apr 9 10:58:41 2018

Traceback:
File "opensesame/libopensesame/item_store.py", line 161, in new
File "opensesame/libopensesame/plugins.py", line 361, in load_plugin
File "opensesame/libopensesame/plugins.py", line 338, in import_plugin
File "opensesame/opensesame_plugins/form_text_display/form_text_display.py", line 22, in
ImportError: No module named items.qtautoplugin

Launching examples/gaze_cuing.osexp

We are very thankful for any help!

Kind regards
Frederik

sebastiaan

Hi Frederik,

As mentioned on the docs, the OpenSesame runtime is broken on recent versions of Android. So that's simply it.

That being said, based on your error message (which I can replicate on my own device), it seems that the very latest update to Android has partly unbroken the runtime again. So this may open doors to fixing the Android runtime. (But that will take some time.)

If you can, I would recommend using a Windows tablet. This will make life much easier.

Cheers,
Sebastiaan

StudentLeipzig

Hi sebastiaan,

thank you for your help. We worked on it and some further information now.

We downgrated our tablet to Android 6. When we are now opening the OpenSesameApp and try to open the example experiment it is finally working - without any bugs! So - Thanks, this problem is solved.

Unfortunately another problem is not: we still can't find the experiments we created and put on the sd-card. In this regard something very strange happened: our experiment on the sd-card was named "Versuch RIcult". I thought opensesame is maybe having some trouble with this German phrase. So I created a folder in the sd-card called "experiments" and put the experiment inside it after renaming it to "experiment". This did not solved the problem (the app still can't find the renamed experiment but funnyly shows me the experiment "Versuch RIcult" now - which is not existing anymore! - At first I was happy but after trying to open it, opensesame was crashing. -- And I just found out why it was showing the "non-existing" experiment to me - it was the only experiment NOT being saved on the sd-card but on the tablet directly! I put the renamed experiment also directly on it and open sesame shows it to me - what a joke. So but I still cannot open the experiments. OpenSesame simply crashes after asking for subject number and logfile.

The debug file - which is also saved directly to the tablet - NOT on the sd-card says:
/sdcard/opensesame-autorun.yml
/mnt/sdcard/opensesame-autorun.yml
Launching opensesame_resources/android/menu.osexp
openexp.sampler._legacy.init_sound(): sampling freq = 48000, buffer size = 1024
experiment.run(): experiment started at Thu Apr 19 08:34:11 2018
experiment.run(): disabling garbage collection
opened /sdcard/opensesame-settings.txt for reading
experiment_folder = /sdcard/
logfile_folder = /sdcard/
opened /sdcard/opensesame-settings.txt for writing
experiment.run(): experiment finished at Thu Apr 19 08:34:27 2018
experiment.end(): enabling garbage collection
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "opensesame/main.py", line 111, in main
File "opensesame/libopensesame/experiment.py", line 138, in init
File "opensesame/libopensesame/item.py", line 64, in init
File "opensesame/libopensesame/experiment.py", line 343, in from_string
File "opensesame/libopensesame/item_store.py", line 172, in new
ImportError: No module named media_player_mpy

Launching /sdcard/RIcult.osexp

We are very thankful for any help!
Cheers
Frederik

sebastiaan

Hi Frederik,

I'm afraid that the media_player_mpy is not supported on Android. Only a subset of OpenSesame's functionality is. You can find an overview of supported modules here:

• http://osdoc.cogsci.nl/3.2/manual/android/

Regarding the confusion about the SD Card. OpenSesame looks at the folder that is called /sdcard by Android. This indeed does not always actually correspond to an SD Card.

Cheers!
Sebastiaan

StudentLeipzig

Hi Sebastiaan,

at first we would like to thank you again for your reply! You are helping us a lot!

I still have a further question about the first point: Does this mean that we cannot open any videos with the OpsenSesameApp on an android tablet or does it mean that we just cannot open .wmv-videos with the OpsenSesameApp on an android tablet (so it would be possible solution to just comprimite the videos)?

Cheers!
Frederik

eduard

Hi Frederik,

Does this mean that we cannot open any videos with the OpsenSesameApp on an android tablet

Yes, that is what he means. There is no video-playback plugin that works on Android, so the format doesn't matter, it just doesn't work unfortunately.

Eduard

StudentLeipzig

Hi Eduard,

we thank you very much! Finally our workgroup decided to buy a windows tablet. Which tablet do you recommend for using OpenSesame. I read about it but I do not remember the exact type.

Cheers
Frederik

eduard

No idea, I don't have much experience with tablets. @sebastiaan: Do you have any recommendations?

sebastiaan

Well, there are so many roughly equivalent devices that it's hard to say. The ASUS transformer series is pretty ok, I think. Having a 2-in-1 with a detachable screen is the most convenient form factor, in my opinion.