PsychoPy

An alternative to MATLAB, PsychoPy is an open-source package for creating and managing psychology stimuli in Python.

PsychoPy combines the graphical strengths of OpenGL with the easy Python syntax to give psychophysics a free and simple stimulus presentation and control package.

It can allow the presentation of stimuli and collections of data for a wide range of psychology, neuroscience and psychophysics experiments.

Features:

• Features:
• Simple install process
• Platform independent - run the same script on Win, OS X or Linux
• Flexible stimulus units (degrees, cm, or pixels)
• Coder interface for those that like to program
• Builder interface for those that don't
• Input from keyboard, mouse or button boxes
• Multi-monitor support
• Automated monitor calibration (requires PR650 or Minolta LS110)
• Hardware Integration:
• Communication via serial ports
• Communication via parallel ports
• Communication via compiled drivers (dlls and dylibs)
• Interfaces are prebuilt for:
• Spectrascan PR650
• Minolta LS110
• Cambridge Research Systems Bits++
• Cedrus response boxes (RB7xx series)
• Huge variety of stimuli generated in real-time:
• Linear gratings, bitmaps constantly updating
• Radial gratings
• Random dots
• Movies (DivX, mov, mpg...)
• Text (unicode in any truetype font)
• Shapes
• Sounds (tones, numpy arrays, wav, ogg...)

What is new in this release:

• FIXED:
• Further fixes to greyscale coloring (some images were not correctly detected as greyscale by PIL so tests weren't working)
• Machines that didn't support shaders or framebuffer objects were raising an error on win.flip() if the useFBO argument was not manually set to False. Machines that don't support the new rendering methods are now handled more gracefully
• Named colors were not interpreted correctly by the visual.Window (but worked fine for stimuli)
• The error message about TextBox/FontManager not working doesn't show up any more
• Reinstated the requirement that wx is version 2.8.x only until we get time to check 3.0 compatibility more deeply

What is new in version 1.74.03:

• FIXED:
• The multiline text entry box in the Builder Text Component was broken.
• IMPROVED:
• Serial (RS232) interface to fORP button box to avoid recording repeated presses. Does not affect use of fORP box from USB interface.

What is new in version 1.71.00:

• ADDED:
• RatingScale method to allow user to setMarkerPosition()
• Builder dialogs display a ‘$' to indicate fields that expect code/numeric input
• Text Component now has a wrapWidth parameter to control the bounding box of the text
• Opacity parameter to visual stimulus components in the Builder, so you can now draw plaids etc from the builder
• FIXED:
• Can edit or delete filename from loop dialog
• Bug in RunTimeInfo (no longer assumes that the user has git installed)
• Bug in BufferImageStim
• Bug in Builder Ratingscale (was always ending routine on response)
• Problem with nested loops in Builder. Inner loop was not being repeated. Loops are now only created as they are needed in the code, not at the beginning of the script
• Rendering of many stimuli was not working beyond 1000 elements (fixed by removal of depth testing)
• Mouse component now using start/duration correctly (broken since 1.70.00)
• When changing the texture (image) of a PatchStim, the stimulus now ‘remembers' if it had been created with no size/sf set and updates these for the new image (previously the size/sf got set according to the first texture provided)
• Putting a number into Builder Sound Component does now produce a sound of that frequency
• Added ‘sound','misc','log' to the component names that PsychoPy will refuse. Also a slightly more informative warning when the name is already taken
• Opacity parameter was having no effect on TextStim when using shaders
• Bug with MovieStim not starting at beginning of movie unless a new movie was added each routine

What is new in version 1.70.01:

• CHANGED:
• Use of allowedKeys in Keyboard Component. You used to be able to type ynq to get those keys, but this was confusing when you then needed ‘space' or ‘left' etc. Now you must type ‘y','n','q', which makes it more obvious how to include ‘space','left','right'...
• Dot algorithm in DotStim. Previously the signalDots=same/different was using the opposite to Scase et al's terminology, now they match. Also the default method for noiseDots was ‘position' and this has been changed to ‘direction'. The documentation explaining the algorithms has been clarified.

What is new in version 1.65.00:

• FIXED errors with importing from ‘ext' and ‘contrib'
• FIXED error in joystick demos
• FIXED bug in ElementArrayStim depth
• FIXED bug in misc.maskMatrix. Was not using correct scale (0:1) for the mask stage
• FIXED buglet in StairHandler, which was only terminating during a reversal
• FIXED bug when loading movies - they should implicitly pause until first draw() (thanks Giovanni Ottoboni)
• IMPROVED handling of non-responses in Builder experiments, and this can now be the correct answer too (corrAns=None). ie. can now do go/no-go experiments. (Non-responses are now empty cells in excel file, not "-" as before.)

What is new in version 1.62.02:

• FIXED: problem with RadialStim causing subsequent TextStims not to be visible
• FIXED: bug with saving StairHandler data as .xlsx
• ADDED: option for gui.fileOpenDlg and fileSaveDlg to receive a custom file filter
• FIXED: builder implementation of staircases (initialisation was buggy)
• FIXED: added Sound.setSound() so that sounds in builder can take new values each trial
• FIXED: when a Routine was copied and pasted it didn't update its name properly (e.g. when inserted into the Flow it kept the origin name)
• FIXED: color rendering for stimuli on non-shader machines using dkl,lms, and named color spaces
• ADDED: data.QuestHandler (Thanks to Zarrar Shehzad). This is much like StairHandler but uses the QUEST routine of Watson and Pelli
• CHANGED: TextStim orientation now goes the other way, for consistency with other stimuli (thanks Manuel Spitschan for noticing)
• FIXED: Problem with DotStim using ‘sqr' fieldShape
• ADDED: MovieStim now has a setMovie() method (a copy of loadMovie())
• FIXED: problem with MovieStim.loadMovie() when a movie had already been loaded