OpenMonkeyMind

Plugins and extension for OpenSesame

About

OpenMonkeyMind (OMM) allows OpenSesame experiments to be managed on a central server (omm-server) and deployed to computers running OpenSesame with the omm-client software installed.

Credits

© 2020 - 2022:

• Sebastiaan Mathôt (@smathot), University of Groningen, The Netherlands
• Daniel Schreij (@dschreij)
• Joel Fagot (@joelfagot), CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, France
• Nicolas Claidère (@nclaidiere), CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, France
• Pascal Belin, Aix Marseille University, France

The development of Open Monkey Mind was supported by ERC Advanced grant COVOPRIM #78824

Jump to

• Requirements
• Installation
• Connecting to the OMM Server
• Implementing an experiment for OMM
• The omm Python object
• License

Requirements

• OpenSesame 3.3
• OpenMonkeyMind server software

Installation

You can install OpenMonkeyMind through PyPi/ pip:

pip install opensesame-extension-omm

Or through Anaconda (if you're running an Anaconda Python environment):

conda install opensesame-extension-omm -c cogsci -y

To run these commands in the OpenSesame console, you need to prefix them with !:

!conda install opensesame-extension-omm -c cogsci -y

Ubuntu users can also install OpenMonkeyMind through the Rapunzel PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:smathot/rapunzel
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-opensesame-extension-omm

Connecting to the OMM server

The easiest way to connect to an OMM server is through the OpenMonkeyMind extension (Menu → Tools → OpenMonkeyMind). This opens a basic configuration panel that specifies a few things:

• The Server address and port of the OMM server. An OMM server must be running, either locally on your own computer or somewhere else. If a server is detected, the checkmark next to the port will turn green.
• The identification method that is used to announce participants.
  • The keypress method collects a single key press, which means that participant identifiers are limited to single characters.
  • The form method collects a multicharacter identifier through a text-input form.
  • The rfid method reads an identifier from an RFID chip (specific to Rousset).
• The backend, display resolution, and a fullscreen option. These options will apply to all experiments running in the session.
• The local log file is a file on the local system. Log data will be appended to this log file as one line of JSON data for every time that a logger is called. The logger also sends this data to the OMM server.
• The fallback experiment is an experiment file on the local system that will be executed when the OMM server cannot be reached or when no jobs are lined up for the participant. The fallback experiment will be disconnected, i.e. the omm.connected property will be False.
• The YAML data allows you to optionally specify experimental variables in the form of a YAML dictionary.

The green play button starts a session. If the YAML data is invalid or a server is not detected at the specified address and port, the button is disabled.

You can also open a template to create your own entry-point experiment for connecting to an OMM server. By default, the entry-point experiment first waits until a participant identifier is detected with the OMMDetectParticipant item. The OMMAnnounce item then sends this identifier to the OMM Server, which returns an experiment file that is subsequently started.

Implementing an experiment for OMM

The easiest way to build a new OMM-compatible experiment is by first opening the OpenMonkeyMind extension (Menu → Tools → OpenMonkeyMind) and from there opening the template for a new experiment. In this template, most of the action happens in trial_sequence. This can be an arbitrary trial sequence, just like you're used to in regular OpenSesame experiments.

Requesting a job from the OMM server

The OMMRequestJob item gets a job from the OMM server. Effectively, this sets an experimental variables for each column from the job table. In that sense, it is similar to what the block_loop would do in a regular OpenSesame experiment.

If the job contains the variables _run and/ or _prepare then those are assumed to contain Python code, which is executed during the Run or Prepare phase of the OMMRequestJob item.

By default, the next unfinished job will be retrieved. That is, the job table will be consumed from top to bottom. You can also specify a specific job index. This is mostly useful if you want to constrain the order in which jobs are executed.

If you want to test the experiment by running it directly (i.e. without being connected to an OMM server), then you can indicate a 'Loop for testing'. In that case, a job will be emulated by randomly selecting a row from the loop table.

The following variables are set automatically:

• omm_job_index indicates the position of the job in the job table, where the first job is at index 1.
• omm_job_count indicates the number of jobs in the table.
• omm_job_id indicates a unique identifier for the job. This identifier is different from omm_job_index because it does not indicate the position of the job in the job table.

Sending job results to the OMM server

You can use a regular logger item to send job results (i.e. experimental variables) to the OMM server. (This works because the entry-point experiment installs a special log backend.) In addition to being sent to the server, the job results are also appended in json format to the log file that you have indicated when starting the entry-point experiment.

Seed dispenser

The OMMConditioner item allows for dispensing seed rewards (specific to Rousset).

The omm Python object

The omm object is added to the Python workspace automatically when an experiment is executed by an entry point; in this case the omm.connected property is True. Otherwise, the omm object is added to the workspace during the prepare phase of the first OMM plug-in in the experiment; in this case, the omm.connected property is False. Therefore, if you want to use the omm object in an inline_script, the safest way to do this is to check whether it exists and is connected, like so:

if 'omm' in globals() and omm.connected:
    print('Connected to an OMM server')
else:
    print('Not connected to an OMM server')

License

Icons are based on emojis designed by OpenMoji – the open-source emoji and icon project. License: CC BY-SA 4.0

The rest of OpenMonkeyMind is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License 3. The full license should be included in the file COPYING, or can be obtained from:

• http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt