We only see your messages here, but none of the forwarded stuff from your student. Could you try copy and pasting those responses from your student, as pure text, with no color or other formatting? Something in that text must be not liked by the discourse forum? Or try using one of the e-mail addresses i mentioned? That is just e-mail, so hopefully that will work.
I tried the web interfase, I tried not formatting the email, I tried sending it to the psychtoolbox email of my thread, I apologise for suggestion if you may set an email account on google just for me to send you the email. I am feeling very inadequate. Got very strange errors from the webinterfase for which I logged in and in other attempts after re-starting my laptop I used the link below the email we receive from the three. Some errors said that new users couldn’t use more than two links…or something like that…oh well.
Below is everything again not formatted, Johanna’s answers are after each of your points in your email. You may have to go through it all to find your suggestions and questions, and the after each suggestion or questions you will find her answer or the results when she followed it step by step . If this one doesn’t make it please consider setting a different mode like a google account for us to write you.
All the best
WandaYour help will be appreciated and we may pay for more time if needed. The details of each computer and error outputs are: |
- |
First in Mac OS:
Output of
>> PsychtoolboxVersion
ans = 3.0.17 - Flavor: beta - Corresponds to SVN Revision 11892
For more info visit:(It gives an url but your system says ti does not accept url pasted and bounces the email back again so we removed the url that was supposed to be here)
Which platform (Mac OS X, Windows XP/Vista/7, Linux, …)
Mac OS Big Sur - Version 11.2.3
- |
ans = 3.0.17 - Flavor: beta - Corresponds to SVN Revision 11892
For more info visit:
(It gives an url but your system says ti does not accept url pasted and bounces the email back again so we removed the url that was supposed to be here)
Mac OS Big Sur - Version 11.2.3
Hm. macOS 11 is not yet officially supported, and potentially an even bigger troublemaker than macOS 10, but lets hope this won’t be the problem here.
I assume that is the latest PTB 3.0.17 beta, and the latest 64-Bit Octave 6.1 or 6.2 for Windows or macOS?
Yes, all the last.
I assume Octave on macOS is installed from the HomeBrew package manager?
Yes
That is what is tested and supported on macOS. I assume Octave on macOS runs in a terminal window without GUI?
Exactly.
I know that Octave or macOS works rather unreliably – usually hangs when you try to quit it at the end. This is due to incompatibilities caused by Apple macOS - Apple is not only a reliability nightmare for Psychtoolbox, but also for other packages like Octave…
How important is precise visual stimulation timing or audio-video sync, or sync with eye trackers (an Eyelink seems to be involved in some of your work?), or precision of reaction time measurements? On a display with typical 60 Hz refreshr rate, are errors on the order of 3 refresh cycles or 3*16.666 ~ 50 msec acceptable?
Yes, ~ 50 msec is acceptable for us.
We strongly recommend Linux for demanding research and great timing. But if visual timing or timestamping errors in the 50 msecs range are not too bad for your paradigm, that allows for workarounds on low quality Windows or macOS systems.
Warnings and Errors that were printed to the console (please read them carefully)
The script starts, shows the screen of psychtoolbox and then turns black and nothing else happens, the first time I wait only some minutes but second time I wait hours and nothing happen, I press Ctrl+C but the screen continue black, I shut down the computer and when I turn on again the next error appear in the console:
PsychHID-ERROR: Could not enumerate and attach to all HID devices (HIDBuildDeviceList(0,0) failed)!
PsychHID-ERROR: One reason could be that some HID devices are already exclusively claimed by some 3rd party device drivers
PsychHID-ERROR: or applications. I will now retry to only claim control of a hopefully safe subset of devices like standard
PsychHID-ERROR: keyboards, mice, gamepads and supported USB-DAQ devices and other vendor defined devices and hope this goes better…PsychHID-INFO: That worked. A subset of regular mouse, keyboard etc. input devices and maybe some vendor defined devices will be available at least.
Hardware setup and relevant driver versions
MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2018)Graphics Intel UHD Graphics 617 1536 MB
Second I try on Windows:
Output of
>> PsychtoolboxVersion
ans = 3.0.17 - Flavor: beta - Corresponds to SVN Revision 11892
For more info visit:Which platform (Mac OS X, Windows XP/Vista/7, Linux, …)
Windows 10 Home Single LanguageVersion 20H2
Warnings and Errors that were printed to the console (please read them carefully)
I don’t obtain any error here, the script starts, shows the screen of psychtoolbox and then turns black and nothing else happens, when I click on the screen a pop up window tells me that the program is not responding and close octave. When I reopen octave I try the command ple but show me ‘No error message stored’
Hardware setup and relevant driver versions
The script starts, shows the screen of psychtoolbox and then turns black and nothing else happens, the first time I wait only some minutes but second time I wait hours and nothing happen, I press Ctrl+C but the screen continue black, I shut down the computer and when I turn on again the next error appear in the console:
PsychHID-ERROR: Could not enumerate and attach to all HID devices (HIDBuildDeviceList(0,0) failed)!
PsychHID-ERROR: One reason could be that some HID devices are already exclusively claimed by some 3rd party device drivers
PsychHID-ERROR: or applications. I will now retry to only claim control of a hopefully safe subset of devices like standard
PsychHID-ERROR: keyboards, mice, gamepads and supported USB-DAQ devices and other vendor defined devices and hope this goes better…
PsychHID-INFO: That worked. A subset of regular mouse, keyboard etc. input devices and maybe some vendor defined devices will be available at least.
MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2018)
Graphics Intel UHD Graphics 617 1536 MB
ans = 3.0.17 - Flavor: beta - Corresponds to SVN Revision 11892
For more info visit:
https://github.com/Psychtoolbox-3/Psychtoolbox-3
Windows 10 Home Single Language
Version 20H2
I don’t obtain any error here, the script starts, shows the screen of psychtoolbox and then turns black and nothing else happens, when I click on the screen a pop up window tells me that the program is not responding and close octave. When I reopen octave I try the command ple but show me ‘No error message stored’Ok, first try these commands before running your scripts, to help us get some good debug output:
diary onwill create a “diary” text file in the current working directory with all output to the Octave (or Matlab) window, so you can find all output even if you had to terminate Octave or Matlab, or if it crashed.
PsychDebugWindowConfigurationbefore theScreen('Openwindow)` command, should make the Psychtoolbox window half-transparent, so you can see the stimuli and the Octave window at the same time, which simplifies debugging – more convenient than that diary thing if it works.
I paste the message of the command window, the screen shows me a warning image on read after closing the program. The diary file is attached to this email.
ans = 1
Initialize Eyelink Connection and Data file
Eyelink already initialized!
Initialize Display Screen
PTB-INFO: Retina display. Enabling panel fitter for scaled Retina compatibility mode.
PTB-INFO: This is Psychtoolbox-3 for Apple OS X, under GNU/Octave 64-Bit (Version 3.0.17 - Build date: Dec 17 2020).
PTB-INFO: OS support status: OSX version 11.0 is not yet tested or officially supported at all for this Psychtoolbox release.
PTB-INFO: Type ‘PsychtoolboxVersion’ for more detailed version information.
PTB-INFO: Most parts of the Psychtoolbox distribution are licensed to you under terms of the MIT License, with
PTB-INFO: some restrictions. See file ‘License.txt’ in the Psychtoolbox root folder for the exact licensing conditions.
PTB-INFO: For information about paid priority support, community membership and commercial services, please type
PTB-INFO: ‘PsychPaidSupportAndServices’.
PTB-INFO: OpenGL-Renderer is Intel Inc. :: Intel(R) UHD Graphics 617 :: 2.1 INTEL-16.1.12
PTB-INFO: Renderer has 1536 MB of VRAM and a maximum 3072 MB of texture memory.
PTB-INFO: VBL startline = 2100 , VBL Endline = -1
PTB-INFO: Beamposition queries unsupported or defective on this system. Using basic timestamping as fallback.
PTB-INFO: Timestamps returned by Screen(‘Flip’) will be therefore less robust and accurate.
PTB-INFO: Measured monitor refresh interval from VBLsync = 17.457918 ms [57.280598 Hz]. (57 valid samples taken, stddev=3.972621 ms.)
PTB-INFO: Small deviations between reported values are normal and no reason to worry.
PTB-WARNING: ==================================================================================================================
PTB-WARNING: DESKTOP COMPOSITOR IS ACTIVE! ALL FLIP STIMULUS ONSET TIMESTAMPS WILL BE VERY LIKELY UNRELIABLE AND LESS ACCURATE!
PTB-WARNING: STIMULUS ONSET TIMING WILL BE UNRELIABLE AS WELL, AND GRAPHICS PERFORMANCE MAY BE REDUCED!
PTB-WARNING: DO NOT USE THIS MODE FOR RUNNING REAL EXPERIMENT SESSIONS WITH ANY REQUIREMENTS FOR ACCURATE TIMING!
PTB-WARNING: ==================================================================================================================
WARNING: Couldn’t compute a reliable estimate of monitor refresh interval! Trouble with VBL syncing?!?
----- ! PTB - ERROR: SYNCHRONIZATION FAILURE ! -----
One or more internal checks (see Warnings above) indicate that synchronization
of Psychtoolbox to the vertical retrace (VBL) is not working on your setup.
This will seriously impair proper stimulus presentation and stimulus presentation timing!
Please read ‘help SyncTrouble’ for information about how to solve or work-around the problem.
You can force Psychtoolbox to continue, despite the severe problems, by adding the command
Screen(‘Preference’, ‘SkipSyncTests’, 1); at the top of your script, if you really know what you are doing.
PTB-INFO: Psychtoolbox imaging pipeline starting up for window with requested imagingmode 33793 …
PTB-INFO: Will use 8 bits per color component framebuffer for stimulus drawing.
PTB-INFO: Enabling panel fitter. Providing virtual framebuffer of 1680 x 1050 pixels size.
PTB-INFO: Will use 8 bits per color component framebuffer for stimulus post-processing (if any).
Display Experiment Instruction
Initialize & Calibration Eyelink Tracker
Do Eyelink Experiment
blocks = 2
trialsPerBlock = 8
jitter = 0.9000
Do our demos work without problems, or do they run into problems as well? E.g.,
PerceptualVBLSyncTest,LinesDemo, etc.?
One of them run into problems, here the output of PerceptualVBLSyncTest, LinesDemo runs without problems:
PsychHID-ERROR: Could not enumerate and attach to all HID devices (HIDBuildDeviceList(0,0) failed)!
PsychHID-ERROR: One reason could be that some HID devices are already exclusively claimed by some 3rd party device drivers
PsychHID-ERROR: or applications. I will now retry to only claim control of a hopefully safe subset of devices like standard
PsychHID-ERROR: keyboards, mice, gamepads and supported USB-DAQ devices and other vendor defined devices and hope this goes better…
PsychHID-INFO: That worked. A subset of regular mouse, keyboard etc. input devices and maybe some vendor defined devices will be available at least.
dear Mario!
good day! sorry for the bother! were you able to receive the email we posted yesterday? in my computer it feels it is posted. let us know. And forgive us for being so persistent!
all the best
wanda
Dear Mario!
I hope you are doin great!
Seems we sent the email successfully. We were able to “see it” in the discourse blog.
Let me know if you may see it
wanda
So this time posting it worked - progress! 
The output suggests that on the MacBook Air with macOS 11.2, basic use of Octave worked, at least when used with the PsychDebubWindowConfiguration command. And your experiment script ran without errors? I assume stimuli displayed correctly, just half-transparent?
→ That would be good, no trouble with Octave or with mistakes in your script.
Those PsychHID warnings are weird. Are any special devices connected via USB? Those should at least not affect keyboard input, as far as i can see.
Now you could retry, again with the diary on command, but without the PsychDebugWindowConfiguration command, so we see realistic stimulus display and if that command affects anything, e.g., hides the error you got.
-
diary on. clear all-
LinesDemo.
Any problems? If you get the “SYNCHRONIZATION FAILURE” error, you can disable the timing correctness tests by executing the command Screen('Preference','SkipSyncTests',2);, e.g.,
diary onclear allScreen('Preference','SkipSyncTests',2);LinesDemo
Does this work? If so, try the same with your experiment script, adding that Screen('Preference','SkipSyncTests',2); command before the Screen('Openwindow', ...) command, so the timing correctness tests and calibrations get skipped.
Normally if those tests fail, the normal desktop GUI should reappear, instead of a black Screen, so that is confusing. Otherwise i would just assume at this point that bad timing on your machines causes the problem. If it again ends with a black screen, try typing sca + ENTER blindly. Or the OPTION + COMMAND + ESC keys to force-quit Octave, so you can still see the terminal windows output, without need for a reboot.
Another statement you could add to your script for error handling is this one at the beginning of your main script:
canary = onCleanup(@sca);
This should call the sca command whenever your script terminates unexpectedly and the “canary” variable goes out of scope, e.g., due to some unhandled error, so sca would close the Psychtoolbox onscreen window.
You can try running the same tests on Windows. What graphics card does the Windows machine have?
If posting on the forum does not work, try the kleiner@mi-incubator.com e-mail address, so we don’t lose too much time fighting with the forum software.
Buying more priority support would probably be good. So far we’ve used up more than 1.5 hours.
Best,
-mario
Dear Mario! Thank you so much! we just bought another hour and we will include the license number in the next email.
We keep our finges crossed. I am glad there is progress.
Johanna will write this afternoon!
Thanks so much!
Wanda
Hi Mario!
Here are Johanna’s answers we also added the script for if you fancy running it.
Wanda
(Attachment TrainingErrorBasedPISADoNOTtOUCH_Johanna.zip is missing)