[open] Send triggers to parallel port with OpenSesame

Comments

• Pia

  March 2016 edited March 2016

  This is what my experiment and the parallel port plugin looks like:

  

  Does anyone have any idea?
  Thank you!
• Pia

  March 2016 edited 5:37PM

  I'm sorry to ask again, but I have no idea what to do... so do any of you have any? Also if it may not work I can try if I know what to try...
  Thank you!
• sebastiaan

  March 2016 edited 5:37PM

  Hi Pia,

  This is definitely a bug in the plug-in, so I forwarded this problem to @Bob, the developer.

  Cheers,
  Sebastiaan

  
  
  Check out SigmundAI.eu for our OpenSesame AI assistant!
  
• eduard

  March 2016 edited March 2016

  Hi Pia,

  In the meantime, you might wanna try sending the triggers from within an inline_script. I ran an EEG experiment in this way and it worked quite nicely.
  So, here you go:

  In a first inline_script in the beginning of your script, you have to initialize the port connection.

  """
  establish connection to EEG port and set some general eeg related variables
  """
  try:
      from ctypes import windll
      global io
      io = windll.dlportio # requires dlportio.dll !!!
  except:
      print 'The parallel port couldn\'t be opened'
  
  # portAdress
  port=0x378
  

  Once set up, you can send triggers with io.DlPortWritePortUchar(port,trigger). However, I prefer doing it from within a little function.

  def sendTrigger(trigger,port=0x378):
      global io
      try:
          io.DlPortWritePortUchar(port,trigger)
      except:
          print 'Failed to send trigger %s!'% trigger 
  

  So, every time you want to send a trigger, you have to call sendTrigger(trigger) from within an inline_script. And also, don't forget to send the zero triggers in the same way.

  I don't know the exact structure of your experiment. Maybe it is necessary to change it to make the triggers being sent at the exact right time. But if you keep the prepare-run-phase in mind (send triggers during run, I suppose), you should be fine if you replace the parallel port plugin with an inline_script.

  I hope this helped.

  Good luck,

  Eduard

  
• _Bob

  March 2016 edited March 2016

  Hi all,

  I am back and actively working on this plugin again.

  Sorry for the unreported changes. I removed the time dimension: duration because it occurred to me it has no real use and forces a wait. Duration could become handy when it can run in parallel within the experiment. Also did not have the time for updating documentation. Done now! If there is a need to get the duration variable back, please let me know and I will put it back in.

  Did some bug fixes (untested) so it should work now. Gonna try to the test the changes tomorrow.

  In the future I will be more involved in the forum. The fastest way to get the bug reports is through github.

  Cheers, Bob
• _Bob

  March 2016 edited 5:37PM

  Seems additionally, dummy mode was always enabled and did not work when there was no pport and/or driver. All fixed in v3.1.
• zennifa

  June 2018

  hi! I tried to use parallel port plugin and also check the serial plugin, but both of them did not give any response to my trigger. Even when I tried to disconnect the trigger box, the parallel port did not give any error message..