Via Twitter, Dennis Hernaus (@hernaus_tweets) contacted me about my MPy150 library for BioPac’s MP150 system (read this older blog post for more info). After some fiddling, he managed to get his MP160 device to work in Python, and I figured it would be good to share his efforts here.
Testing children is less easy than testing adults, primarily because they lack the social inhibition to tell psychological researchers to go away with their super boring tests. This presents a problem in developmental research: How do you reach these kids?! We developed a bunch of iPad games to test the cognition of an entire classroom in one go. And it works!
Tobii is a major player in the eye-tracking world, selling devices to customers in business and science. Today, Tobii has made a major step towards supporting open science by adding support for its new SDK in PyGaze (and by extension in OpenSesame). You can review the code on GitHub, download the package, or download a full WinPython version. Details below, and more info on downloading here.
Gazepoint is a relatively small player on the eye-tracking market. They sell two devices: the 60 Hz GP3 at a price of $695, and the 150 Hz GP3 HD at $1995 (both of those prices exclude VAT and shipping). Because of its relatively low price, the basic GP3 is an appealing model for researchers on a budget. As of today, PyGaze supports Gazepoint’s trackers through their OpenGaze API. Download the new code from GitHub, and have fun!
This morning, the EyeTribe announced via an email to their customers that they would stop the development of their products. The particular reason is rather vague (“we’ve decided to go in a different direction with our technology“), and researchers across the board are not happy. The EyeTribe was the only real option for cheap eye tracking: It was great for demonstrations, for pupillometry and fixation control, it had a very elegant API, and the hardware was great for how much you paid for it. Best of all: It didn’t come with the restrictive licenses that almost all of the EyeTribe’s competitors use to milk their customers for more money. I, for one, am sad about the loss of this great company.
Although it sounds like a lot of effort, creating a Twitter bot is actually really easy! This tutorial, along with some simple tools, can help you create Twitter bots that respond when they see certain phrases, or that periodically post a tweet. These bots work with Markov chains, which can generate text that looks superficially good, but is actually quite nonsensical. You can make the bots read your favourite texts, and they will produce new random text in the same style!
Sigmund Freud is back! He returned in the form of a Twitter bot that replies when someone uses the hashtag #askFreud in their tweets. Not unlike the real Freud, Sigbot produces nonsensical, but real-looking text that is produced using a Markov chain. The bot can recognise and respond to specific keywords, and it can speak both German and English.
Introducing MPy150: an easy-to-use Python library for using a BIOPAC MP150. Sample code included!
In Gmail, you can set a vacation responder, which is great for automatic replies. But it offers no selectivity for people that have more than one address linked to their account: You can’t set the vacation responder to reply only to emails that were sent to your work address! That’s annoying. Fortunately, this little hack does allow you to set a selective auto-reply.
The EyeTribe tracker is really cheap, and you can now use it in Python and in Matlab. It’s not as bad as you would expect from its price, and you could probably use it in fixation or pupillometry studies. For in-depth info, read this validation study.