Description

1. nrec is a software package for stimulation, data acquisition and experiment control

Originally it was designed to be used in cognitive brain research, but it is made to be as generally applicable as possible:

2. nrec is based on standard technology for robustness and enduring usability

• hardware independence:

  • standard PC

  • standard graphics card

  • comedi data acquisition library supports a lot of standard cards/boards/boxes

• software standards:

  • it runs on a standard debian linux

  • it is developed in standard C++

  • parameter files format: standard XML

  • data storage files format: standard hdf5, Matlab readable

  • graphics primitives are built using the standard OpenGL library

3. Current features

• graphics primitives:
  • circle
  • rectangle

  • dotfield (RDK)

  • text

  • arrow

  • Landolt-C (for visual acuity measurements)

  • movie (avi)

  • image (png)

  • square plaids

  • 3D dotfield (stereo-mode: none, anaglyph, quad-buffer)

  • circular checkerboard, also in parts, with flickering and radial and tangential movement

• eyetracker calibration, fixation control, online data visualization

• the option to make a primitive a visual target
• controllers that make the primitives move and jump and that handle digital in- or outputs
• freely configurable digital channels for respone buttons, reward systems, LEDs etc.
• experiment control by strategy based parameter setting

• luminance correction by using a freely definable alpha mask loadable from a simple file