Hello,
I want to use mworks in the future for recording voltage sensitive dye experiments and i have some questions:
Is mworks communicating well with VDAQ?
Which acquisition card and BNC box should we use?
Which version of mac is suitable for using mworks?
Thanks,
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
I’m not aware of any current usage of MWorks for voltage sensitive dye experiments. Can you point me to the specific hardware/software you want to use?
FYI, I’m out of the office until Jan. 3, but I’ll be happy to assist you further when I return.
Cheers,
Chris Stawarz
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your help. We are currently running VSD experiments in awake behaving monkeys. We are using VDAQ (optical imaging acquisition - windows) REX (behavioral control - QNX) and VSG (visual stimulation -windows) on 3 different computers (each with a acquisition board). Our rationale is to update REX to a newer system and simplify the whole system (using mworks for visual stimulation as well will allow to work with only 2 computers)
-mworks will need to communicate with
*eyelink for eyes position through ethernet port (but I understand this is already implemented)
*psychopy to display stimuli, if stimulus generator of mworks does not fulfill our needs
we guess here that if running in the same computer we will not need for specific hardware communication
*VDAQ for optical imaging acquisition.
mostly need 8 DIO for communication (stimulus encoding, trial ready, GO signal etc…)
VDAQ runs on windows and already have a BNC panel on his side to handle this communication (so far we are doing it with REX)
We will need to save
at least 3 analogic signals (eye position H&V, pupil size)
at least 2 digital pulses (heart beat and breathing)
Had a good holiday,
Sarah Cattan
Hi Sarah,
You’re correct that MWorks already supports connecting to EyeLink devices via Ethernet. It also supports a number of stimulus types. If you need one that isn’t currently supported, it can be added via a plugin.
For general-purpose I/O, National Instruments DAQ’s are well supported, albeit with the caveats that (1) the list of devices supported on macOS is small, and (2) recent NI driver releases have demonstrated some issues with analog input. Another option would be to use a Firmata-compatible microcontroller for digital I/O. As with stimuli, if there’s a different piece of hardware that you want to use, we can add support via a plugin.
When you say you need to save 3 analog signals and 2 digital pulses, do you mean that you need MWorks to record them (which will happen automatically if MWorks is sending or receiving the signals), or do you need MWorks to send them to VDAQ for recording?
Regarding Mac models: MWorks will work on any Mac (laptop or desktop) running macOS 10.9 or later. If your production machine will have only one display attached, pretty much any model should be fine. If you want to attach multiple displays (e.g. one for the monkey, one the experimenter), then I’d recommend a higher-end desktop model (i.e. iMac or Mac Pro).
Cheers,
Chris
Hi Chris,
We are currently looking for the best acquisition board for the mworks computer ( to send/receive triggers, and receive analogic).
We looked at the supported boards on the mworks website and we hesitate between:
Many thanks in advance,
Have a nice day,
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
I don’t have any experience with either of those devices. According to the specs, both models have a single, 32-bit counter. The only difference is 12 bits vs 14 bits for the analog inputs. I don’t know if that will make any difference in your experiment.
Cheers,
Chris
Hi Chris,
I am currently trying to calibrate my screen and I found this 2014 discussionhttps://mworks.tenderapp.com/discussions/suggestions/369-gamma-calibration where you said that mworks is not supporting gamma calibration. Is this discussion still valid?
Have a nice day,
Sarah Cattan
Yes, that’s all still valid. There have been no changes to how MWorks manages colors.
Chris