Hi all,
Apologies if this is a newbie question, but I (research tech) am setting up the equipment for a monkey ephys rig and was hoping to get some advice on the best way to interface MonkeyLogic with our recording system.
Our setup consists of:
- MonkeyLogic running on a behavioral (control) computer
-Open Ephys GUI running on a separate recording computer
-Two Open Ephys Acquisition Boards (linked to recording PC via usb)
-OpenEphys I/O board with BNC analog/digital inputs/outputs
-Eye tracking, photodiode, reward system, etc.
There are two things we'd like the behavioral computer to do:
1. Send behavioral event markers (e.g., trial start/end, fixation acquired, stimulus onset, reward, etc.) to Open Ephys so they are recorded alongside the neural data.
2. Trigger Open Ephys to start and stop recording automatically from within the MonkeyLogic task, rather than manually clicking Record in the GUI.
From reading the documentation, it seems like eventmarker() can be used to send behavioral codes through a DAQ, and Open Ephys also has an HTTP server that can be used for remote control. Is that the approach most people use, or is there a more standard workflow for integrating MonkeyLogic with Open Ephys?
Right now, our behavioral PC has neither a physical DAQ (PCIe or other) nor a network card (we just use the single motherboard ethernet port for the EyeLink communication). Will either of these be required to do what we hope to accomplish?
For those using a similar setup, I'd be interested in hearing:
>How you're sending behavioral event markers to your recording system (TTL, strobed codes, network events, etc.)
>How you're triggering the start/stop of recordings
>Whether there are any pitfalls or best practices you've learned along the way
Thanks!