FIRMM

[Sajjad Torabian]

Hi Everyone,

We're trying to figure out how FIRMM works in order to monitor head movement, and ideally we'd want to run it on a separate laptop to not mess things on the main computer where our experiment is running through MATLAB. Has anyone done that?

I'd appreciate any help!

Sajjad

[Craig E.L. Stark]

Are you trying to understand how FIRMM works or just trying to use it and see how well it's working?  FWIW, we have FIRMM already in place and in use at FIBRE:

https://imaging.uci.edu/firmm/

Craig

[Sajjad Torabian]

Thanks so much for your reply. Yes, we've looked into the instructions on the website. I'm not quite sure on which computer FIRMM currently runs (because Rongwen mentioned some things are now placed on the computer in the new room -  he was not sure about FIRMM), but if it is the desktop on the right side of the control room - which we all use to run our experiments - our question is whether we can run it on a separate computer as well, maybe on our own laptop. Also, we're eventually looking for a way to project what FIRMM outputs to the screen that the subject is looking at, to inform them of their head movement.

[Rongwen Tain]

The software should be on our Linux machine at FIBRE. On the day that we check the computer I just don’t know why the user account specific for FIRMM was not showing on the screen. This is something that I need to check there. Otherwise, users should be able to use FIRMM if needed. I never try it on my laptop but you could try it if you want. Let me know if you my help.

Rongwen 

On Sep 17, 2020, at 3:05 PM, Sajjad Torabian <tora...@uci.edu> wrote:

Thanks so much for your reply. Yes, we've looked into the instructions on the website. I'm not quite sure on which computer FIRMM currently runs (because Rongwen mentioned some things are now placed on the computer in the new room -  he was not sure about FIRMM), but if it is the desktop on the right side of the control room - which we all use to run our experiments - our question is whether we can run it on a separate computer as well, maybe on our own laptop. Also, we're eventually looking for a way to project what FIRMM outputs to the screen that the subject is looking at, to inform them of their head movement.

[Craig Stark]

As noted on the page, FIRMM is installed on the FIBRE Linux workstation.  It's not installed on the windows box that runs the experiments (although, to be honest, none of this would make that computer break a sweat).  The Linux workstation is a hefty enough machine and heftier than most any laptop you could bring in.

FIRMM shows its display as a nice GUI and you can remote into the Linux box by a number of ways.  Rongwen shows you how to use RDP.  You can use x2go, MobaXterm, or anything else that forwards Linux (X11) graphics.  For example, I'm on my Windows box here (and this could be then the Windows desktop computer at FIBRE that's hooked to the monitor) and I happened to use MobaXterm (you can use the RDP Rongwen showed on the FIRMM page just as easily if not more easily).

So, I logged in as that FIRRM user (to fibre-workstation.rgs.uci.edu) and typed "FIRMM" on the command line.  30 s or so later, that display in the back (which shows the motion) appeared.

Craig

Craig Stark, Ph.D.

James L. McGaugh Chair in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
Professor, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior

Director, Facility for Imaging and Brain Research (FIBRE) & Campus Center for Neuroimaging (CCNI)

School of Biological Sciences, University of California, Irvine

ces...@uci.edu

[Sajjad Torabian]

Thank you both for your help! These made things more clear, Craig. What made me confused was that we weren't able to login to that workstation with Rongwen last week for some reason, and he kindly helped me using another account he had access to, which did not have FIRMM installed. Now, however, I'm successfully running FIRMM inside the firmmproc account and was able to remote into it as well. Thanks again so much.

Best,

Sajjad