GUI announcements

[Josh Siegle]

Latest release

If you've been using Open Ephys version 0.5+, we recommend upgrading to the latest release, v0.5.3.1. 

It includes a few important fixes:

- Saved parameters are now re-loaded properly if a visualizer tab was closed prior to shutting down the application 

- If a source is dropped in the middle of a signal chain, the signal chain is now divided up correctly

- The Rhythm FPGA module no longer crashes on re-load if the ADC channels are activated

You can download an installer here, or grab the .zip file from Bintray. As always, if you encounter any bugs or unexpected behavior, please post an issue on GitHub.

Updates to the Neuropixels Plugin

The latest version of the Neuropixels-PXI plugin (0.3.1), available via the Plugin Installer, fixes some outstanding issues:

- The correct gain settings are now restored after running the signal or noise built-in self tests

- The option to save the sync line as the 385th continuous channel (for compatibility with SpikeGLX offline analysis tools) now applies to the LFP band as well as the AP band

- When using the sync line in "output" mode, the SMA port is now properly configured

New Plugins Available Now

We're excited to announce the release of 4 new plugins from the community. All are available for download via the Plugin Installer for Windows, Linux, and macOS. If you have a chance to try out any of these plugins, we'd love to hear your feedback:

Multi-Band Integrator - by Michelle Fogerson (@mich11), makes it possible to deliver closed-loop feedback based on rhythmic activity. The default parameters are tuned to detect absence-like seizures, but they can be modified for other frequency bands as well.

Crossing Detector - by Ethan Blackwood (@ethanbb) and Mark Schatza (@markschatza), works with the Multi-Band Integrator, Phase Calculator, and other plugins to trigger events whenever a continuous signal crosses a threshold. It has a wide array of parameters that can be adjusted to deliver precise real-time feedback.

Spectrum Viewer - this one is based on the Coherence & Spectrogram Viewer from Sumedh Nagrale (@SumedhNagrale) and Mark Schatza (@markschatza), but pared down to just a real-time power spectrum viewer (at least for now). This one in particular could use some additional features, so let us know what would be most helpful for your experiments!

Ephys Socket - by Jon Newman (@jonnew) makes it possible to stream continuous data from Bonsai to the Open Ephys GUI. If you're using Bonsai for real-time data analysis, but want to visualize your neural data in Open Ephys, this is the plugin you need.

User Survey

Don't forget to fill out the Open Ephys GUI user survey if you haven't already!

This is crucial for planning our support efforts over the coming year. On average it takes people 4 minutes to complete.

Best,

Josh