PowerMate response button

rania_tach

Hello everyone!

I am trying to use an external response button in my experiment, and more specifically Griffin PowerMate 2.0. I have created my experiment with Opensesame 4.0. The response button seems to work (i.e. when i write inline script and press the button the keypress works) however, when i run the experiment and use it as response it doesn't work.

I tried it in an experiment with Opensesame 3.9 and it worked. Do you have any idea what may causes this problem with the 4.0?

Thank you in advance.

Rania

sebastiaan

Hi @rania_tach ,

If my understanding is correct, the Griffin PowerMate 2.0 simulates a keyboard or mouse, which means that you do not have to do anything specific to make it work with OpenSesame (any version). If your experiment used to work in OpenSesame but doesn't work anymore in OpenSesame 4, then likely the compatibility issue lies elsewhere. Without seeing the experiment it's impossible to say though. Maybe you can upload the experiment here (or a simplified version of it that illustrates the issue)?

— Sebastiaan

rania_tach

Hello Sebastiaan,

Sorry for the delay in responding! Yes exactly, the Griffin PowerMate 2.0 simulates a keyboard in my case. My experiment is an rsvp task and the participants have to press a key as long as they see the target. You can see here a version of the experiment in OS 4. When i use the computer keyboard it works.

Again thank you so much for your time.

Best,

Rania

rsvp task.osexp

sebastiaan

Hi @rania_tach ,

There is some room for improvement, notably by filtering out the None responses that you get when there's a timeout. But other than that this looks ok. I suspect that this issue lies elsewhere, not in the experiment or in the transition to OpenSesame 4. If the PowerMate simulates a keyboard, you should also be able to use it as keyboard input in other applications. Does that work?

— Sebastiaan

rania_tach

Hi Sebastiaan,

yes exactly the Powermate works fine in other applications and also in Opensesame 4 but not when the experiment runs. For example, when i write a script and use the powermate as a key, it works fine. But when i use it as keyboard response it doesn't work. I also tried it in a different experiment to see if the issue was in this rsvp but again it didn't work.

sebastiaan

Ok, that's odd. Let's try to understand what kind of keys the powermate returns exactly. What do you see if you collect a number of button with a simple test script that prints out both the key and the type of the key variable?

kb = Keyboard()
key, timestam = kb.get_key()
print(f'key: {key}, type: {type(key)}')

rania_tach

test_button.osexp

Hi Sebastiaan,

so i checked this code and it printed key: space, type: <class 'str'> (i have set it to work as 'space' so it works as expected!!). However, again when i try to use it inside an experiment it doesn't work. I created this simple sketchap that proceeds with keypress to test it and it doesn't work. It is really weird i can't find where the error occurs.

sebastiaan

So just to clarify for me: when inside the same experiment you collect a key press using an inline_script it works, but if you try to collect a key press using a keyboard_response item it doesn't? If that's the case, I really have no clue what might be happening, because a keyboard_response behind the scenes is doing the exact same thing as the inline_script .

rania_tach

Oh no sorry for the misunderstanding! It doesn't work while the experiment is running either if i have a keyboard with inline skript or a keyboard_response item. It might be something wrong with the specific button i can't imagine anything else at this point! I turned my experiment back to OS 3.3.9 and it works but just out of curiosity i will try to think what goes wrong. Also, I will try to see if there is any updates for the Powermate's software that could help.