How to share experiment file and plugins with team members?

ivaylo

Hi guys! I am new to Opensesame and I need some help figuring out how to share experiment files with my team. We're a team of 5 junior scientists collecting data in 4 different countries.

The experiment is an emotion-recognition task with video stimuli. I'm using the media_player_mpy plugin for the video stimuli and the mousetrap-os plugin for the answer screen with the emotion choices. We're interested only in accuracy and reaction time.

My team members don't have programming or Python knowledge, so I was looking to find a way to do either of these two scenarios, but wasn't able to find a way :

1/ Develop the experiment entirely on my machine and just share a run-only experiment file (something like a packaged Windows executable file), where my teammates would only have to double click and start the experiment and run it like that for every participant.

2/ If option 1 is not possible, then I was looking for an easy way to share the plugins and experiment file with them, without having them install the plugins themselves, because I had some dependency issues with installing the media_player_mpy plugin. Is there anything similar?

Any other tips on working in Opensesame for teams would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Best,

Ivaylo

sebastiaan

Hi Ivaylo,

If you're running Windows, then I would say that the easiest way is to download the portable "No Installation Required" package of OpenSesame. Then you unzip it, install everything that you need, perhaps even add batch file to automatically launch the experiment, and then re-zip everything and send this as your own custom package to your colleagues. Would that work?

Cheers!

Sebastiaan

ivaylo

Thanks, Sebastiaan!

I think this would work. (I'll borrow a Windows laptop over the weekend to try it out) I don't have any experience with batch files, but I assume in that case we would just have to double-click it for every single participant and it'll bring out the subject number dialog box and allow us to choose where to save and how to name the csv file (just like when you start an experiment in OpenSesame)

I appreciate the help!

Ivaylo

ivaylo

This worked (followed this instructions for the batch file), but for some reason the plugins I installed wasn't in the portable "No Installation Required" package (mousetrap-plugin and media_player_mpy),so I needed everyone to install the plugins manually.

Is there a different way to install plugins and package them into a portable version (when compared to the normal OpenSesame version), maybe there are some additional steps I have missed?

Thanks!

sebastiaan

If you go to Menu → Tools → Plug-in and extension manager, you can see for each plug-in in which folder they have been installed:

It sounds like they have been installed outside of the OpenSesame program folder in your case. You should be able to simply copy the plugin folders to [OpenSesame program folder]\share\opensesame_plugins and then they will be included in your zipped package.

ivaylo

Thanks, Sebastiaan!

This was exactly the problem - I added them to the package and it worked.

One last question - Since we're recording response time for our experiment and we have 6 people collecting data in 4 different countries, is there anything that could affect the response times on different machines and OS (4 Windows laptops and 2 Macbooks)? I know that the ideal option would be to use the same machine, but we won't be able to do that.

sebastiaan

Yes, timing can of course differ between systems. But as long as all systems are decent, the timing differences should be within reasonable limits so that it doesn't make any practical difference.

However, the only way be sure is to verify the timing on each system, at least by checking the timestamps that are logged by OpenSesame, and ideally even using an external photodiode.

ivaylo

Ok, I'll check timestamps from different machines. Thanks, Sebastiaan!