PsychoPy on an Android tablet?

[Tyler]

I'm wondering if anyone can chime in who may have used PsychoPy on a
linux-based (e.g., Android) tablet, or if anyone can speculate as to
how successful that might be as an environment for running PsychoPy
experiments. Is there any reason to think it would not work?

[Tyler]

I guess a better question would be how well would PsychoPy run in a
touch-screen environment?

[Yaroslav Halchenko]

;-) well -- probably as well as your experimental design would allow for
that

quick&dirty solution atm could be on a rooted device to run linux (e.g.
Debian or Ubuntu) [e.g. 1] with VNC and then vncviewer it. But that
would be quite a cruel solution, not sure what would be the time lag of
registered keypresses etc

[1] http://androlinux.com/android-ubuntu-development/how-to-install-ubuntu-on-android/

On Sat, 28 Jan 2012, Tyler wrote:

> I guess a better question would be how well would PsychoPy run in a
> touch-screen environment?

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[Dave Britton]

There would be problems with the graphics from pygame and pyglet that
require low level C routines. Android does support Open GL, so if pyglet
can be made to run on Android platforms then you have a chance. Android
is all java-centric so the python-based stuff is just barely arriving.
Android's not really linux. Check out
http://code.google.com/p/python-for-android/wiki/BuildingModules
for a start.
-Dave

[Chaz Firestone]

On the touchscreen-environment question, I've been running a PsychoPy experiment on a Windows 7 Tablet (Acer Iconia W500-BZ467) without much difficulty at all. (I hold the tablet in my hands and collect single-trial data from subjects who just touch the screen once). 

Some very minor things to consider, most of which aren't specific to PsychoPy:

- How are you going to quit your experiment while testing or if things go wrong during a session? (If you don't have a keyboard, you can't press 'Q'). I made a small invisible button in one corner of the screen for this purpose, in a location that wouldn't make sense for anyone to touch (and w/ 500+ subjects, no one has yet).

- Disable the tablet's auto-screen-rotate feature, if it has one.

- While running, turn off wi-fi and some auto-update features, which in some circumstances can disrupt the experiment.

*** The only difficulty I encountered that required any thinking to solve was that my tablet seems to record touches a bit differently than it does mouse clicks (it came with a detachable keyboard), such that mouse.getPressed() doesn't always return True in response to screen touches. I'm sure someone savvier than I could have discovered what was causing this and come up with a proper solution, but mine was just to record touches by looking for non-zero values of mouse.getRel(), rather than using mouse.getPressed(), since nobody is moving any cursors around the screen or anything. Any time mouse.getRel() returns a non-zero value, I treat that as a "touch". 

All this is to say that I haven't had much difficulty at all running PsychoPy in a touch-screen environment. Go for it!

Chaz

On Jan 28, 2012, at 12:18 PM, Tyler wrote:

I guess a better question would be how well would PsychoPy run in a
touch-screen environment?

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[Tyler]

Dave you make a good point. PsychoPy may not be compatible with
Android natively (yet). That's really unfortunate, because tablet
testing has so much potential, in my humble opinion, and Android could
be a great environment for it -- especially considering the low-cost.
Maybe this will become possible in the future.

I was thinking that I might buy a tablet and root the device as you
say, Yaroslav. But it looks like going that route might be more
trouble than it's worth (and might not be guaranteed to work).
Certainly, as you say, running another OS via VNC can produce
noticeable lag, a very bad thing. I've seen some reports of successful
rooting and dual-booting with Ubuntu, but I've seen also that the dual-
booted environment may not be 100% functional. Personally, I can't
afford to take the risk since it won't be my money that's being
invested in the device.

Chaz, thanks for posting your success story. After realizing the
uncertainty of hacking an Android tablet for my purposes, I started
looking at Win7 tablets. They are a bit more expensive, but I think
the trade-off might be worth it. It is encouraging to hear that you
have had success with the Iconia in particular as I was also
considering that one.

Thanks all!

[Jonathan Peirce]

Although I'd love to run PsychoPy off Android or iOS devices I don't see
it happening anytime soon. The reason that PsychoPy works on multiple
platforms is that the python libraries have been ported to each one and
operate fairly uniformly. So we hardly have to write any
platform-specific code to make it run. iOS, Android and ChromeOS are
completely different stories. The entire codebase would have to be
rewritten for each.

I have had one PI contact me to say he had a small grant to try and get
something up and running on a mobile platform (he was leaning towards
ipads) and he thinks he might build it on top of the builder/psyexp
experiment description format. That wouldn't be quite the same as
running PsychoPy; it would be a separate application that happens to
read PsychoPy experiments (to save him having to make the GUI controls
etc). Probably the functionality would have to be fairly limited to
start with, e.g. limited to just a couple of stimulus types. If/when
something comes of that project we'll obviously keep people informed.

But for now, regular mac/win/linux distributions (for which python and
pyglet etc are already available) are the way to go.

Jon

--
Dr. Jonathan Peirce
Nottingham Visual Neuroscience

http://www.peirce.org.uk/

[jason gors]

not sure about compatibly with python/psychopy libraries, etc, but just came across this post yesterday regarding a new linux based tablet and thought it might be right up your alley tyler (though hardware's not the best, it's surly better than vnc'ing i'd imagine, and def cheaper than a window's tablet):

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/29/2756229/spark-linux-tablet-plasma-active-open-source-revealed

[Yaroslav Halchenko]

good call Jason

also with open sourcing of WebOS, by the end of the year there might be
a completely different situation with availability of more generic
stacks on top of Linux kernel on tables, thus making psychopy pretty
much natively available on those.

Meanwhile with some research you can find tables which can easily
dual-boot natively into GNU/linux distribution off the SD card:

e.g.
http://stream0.org/2011/11/24/dual-booting-android-and-linux-on-asus-transformer-part-two/

On Mon, 30 Jan 2012, jason gors wrote:

> not sure about�compatibly�with python/psychopy libraries, etc, but just
> came across this post�yesterday regarding�a new linux based tablet and
> thought it might be right up your alley tyler (though hardware's not the
> best, it's surly better than vnc'ing i'd imagine, and def cheaper than a
> window's tablet):

> [1]http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/29/2756229/spark-linux-tablet-plasma-active-open-source-revealed

[He Jibo]

Maybe we can try using Ekoore Python S Tablet which can Triple Boots Ubuntu, Android & Windows 7.
I hope psychopy can support tablets too.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/ekoore-python-s-ubuntu-tablet/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+d0od+%28OMG!+Ubuntu!%29&utm_content=FaceBook

---------------------------
He Jibo
Department of Psychology,
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign,
603 East Daniel St.,
Champaign, IL 61820
website: www.hejibo.info

[Jonathan Peirce]

That should be workable. I've already worked a little with PsychoPy under ubuntu 11.10 and windows 7.

You should note that these tablets have very low-power processors and graphics chips by design (they aim for long battery lives and low-costs), so you really shouldn't expect high-precision timing from them or fast drawing of multiple stimuli.

Jon

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Nottingham Visual Neuroscience

http://www.peirce.org.uk

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[Yaroslav Halchenko]

just ran into it so thought to share

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024974
Smart Phone, Smart Science: How the Use of Smartphones Can Revolutionize Research in Cognitive Science

Cheers,

On Thu, 02 Feb 2012, Jonathan Peirce wrote:

> That should be workable. I've already worked a little with PsychoPy under
> ubuntu 11.10 and windows 7.

> You should note that these tablets have very low-power processors and
> graphics chips by design (they aim for long battery lives and low-costs),
> so you really shouldn't expect high-precision timing from them or fast
> drawing of multiple stimuli.

> Jon

--
Yaroslav O. Halchenko
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Dartmouth College, 419 Moore Hall, Hinman Box 6207, Hanover, NH 03755
Phone: +1 (603) 646-9834 Fax: +1 (603) 646-1419
WWW: http://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik

[Jonathan Peirce]

Are you sure it doesn't have an OpenGL-compatible GPU? That seems surprising.

Out of interest, was there something that PsychoPy lacked that caused you to start a new python-experiment-software project? Or was it just that PsychoPy had /too much/ so was too heavy to load onto a tablet?

cheers for the info,
Jon


On 20/06/2012 11:43, Oliver Lindemann wrote:

I run some experiments using Python on an Ekoore tablet. It is actually a 

crappy tablet for normal everyday use, but it comes with Linux installed 

(unfortunately, they choose Ubuntu). Since Linux is the only OS I know, that 

gives you the full control you need to run experiments, I choose to buy an 

Ekoore tablet. I have to say, that my experiences are mixed. 

The low processor performance is not a problem if you use a light stimulus 

presentations software or/and write efficient code.  We used our own Python 

library called Expyriment (hosted on google code), which is especially design 

for Linux on low-end machines. I have no idea how heavy PsychoPy is, but I 

think it should work as well. 

The big problem is however that the Ekoore tablet has no OpenGL compatible GPU.  

That is, if you need OpenGL for a high-precision timing of your presentations, 

you might have a problem. For my research questions on cognitive control and 

number processing, it work fine. Connecting an external button box helps of 

course to get more precise RT measures. 

Best,

Oliver

-- 

Dr. Oliver Lindemann

Division of Cognitive Science

University of Potsdam

Karl - Liebknecht Str. 24/25, Building 14, 14476 Potsdam, Germany

Tel: +49 - 331 - 977 2915, Fax: +49 - 331 - 977 2794

Room: 6.24, Building 14

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