Neuroarchiver Tool

Description

[11-JAN-23] The Neuroarchiver has been split into two separate tools: the Neurorecorder and Neuroplayer. Follow links to their separate documentation.

Version Changes

Here we list changes to the Neuroarchiver, Neurorecorder, and Neuroplayer before we assigned separate version numbers to the player and recorder tools.

• Neuroarchiver 156: Add Autofill button to main window. The vt and af plots clear when we disable them. Improved handling of errors and warnings during recording. Add Reload button to Neuroplayer so as to refresh the file length, return to the start of the file, and read the file metadata. Add suport for alt_bg tag in the NDF metadata to store tracker detector background powers. Tracker background powers in tracker_background parameter. Customization string supports alt_bg tag for tracker background. Use global num_lines_keep rather than local version.
• Neuroarchiver 155: Eliminate user-selectable data receiver type, detection now automatic. Add customization string to the Neurorecorder. Allow user to specify tracker coil coordinates with "alt" tag in recorder customization string. Edit customization string with Customize and Save.
• Neuroarchiver 154: Low-pass filter added to Neurotracker. Activity in centimeters per second added to Export Panel. Neurotracker now returns three-dimensional position in anticipation of future tracker arrays. Add EDF output to Exporter, with EDF file setup panel. Add single-file output to Exporter, whereby all signals are written to a single output file. Fixed bug in Exporter whereby only the first channel is exported in final interval. Excerpt files now begin with "X" rather than "E".
• Neuroarchiver 153: Improved error reporting and recovery actions in Neurorecorder during network disruption. Videoarchiver directory can reside next to LWDAQ directory rather than in the LWDAQ directory. Neurorecorder does not store tracker coordinates in metadata when the receiver is not a tracker. Rename loss_fraction as min_reception, default value 0.8 = 80%. Add tracker_min_reception to control when the tracker calculates position, default value 0.2 = 20%.
• Neuroarchiver 152: Fix catastrophic bug in sequential navigation that we introduced in V149.
• Neuroarchiver 151: Many changes to the Neurotracker. Remove ability to export tracker power values.
• Neuroarchiver 150: Magnified views now have display control buttons and navigation key bindings.
• Neuroarchiver 149: The Recorder Instrument is re-named the Receiver Instrument. Combine Neurorecorder's "Reset" and "Record" button into a single "Start" button. The Receiver Instrument is available through the Recorder's "Receiver" button. Only one dedicated Overview panel. Overview shares the Player's voltage axis controls and processor select string. Overview contains "Excerpt" function and provides live cursor. Activity Panel opens with Panel button, shows all active channels, allows color changes with mouse clicks. Calibration Panel no longer includes channel states. Sample SCT recordings in NDF format in Images directory, Neuroplayer defaults to one of these. Magnified views now have display control buttons.
• Neuroarchiver 148: The Neurorecorder detects the data receiver type and updates the user-selected type as needed. Default directory for NDF files is the directory above the LWDAQ program rather than in the LWDAQ program directory.
• Neuroarchiver 147: Adjusting graphical user interface of Recorder and Player.
• Neuroarchiver 146: Adapting to separation of Neuroarchiver into Neuroplayer and Neurorecorder.
• Neuroarchiver 145: Update implementation of Neurotracker to allow export of detector powers and tracker positions to disk. Consolidate display updates in the Player, which accelerates playback with graphics. Re-arrange buttons of Player and Recorder to better suit separation into Neuroplayer and Neurorecorder. New color theme: green and gray.
• Neuroarchiver 144: Split the Neuroarchiver into two separate graphical user interfaces, the Neuroplayer and the Neurorecorder. We can launch these two interfaces as separate processes running independently of the main LWDAQ program, permitting reliable recording from multiple telemetry systems or ALTs simultaneously without mutual dependence. Restore an old feature, we generate a double-size plot when we double-click on the normal value or amplitude plots.
• Neuroarchiver 143: When characteristics file is locked, issue warning and store characteristics until the file is available for writing. Do not record the host computer name in the NDF header, doing so caused delays of up to five seconds when creating the first archive in a recording, while LWDAQ looked up the host name.
• Neuroarchiver 142: Enhance the Exporter. Add binary file format (BIN) to the existing text format (TXT). Add the option to repeat the export starting from the time immediately after the end of the previous export. Add option to auto-fill the channel select string.
• Neuroarchiver 141: When the recording file is locked by another process, the Recorder saves one interval of data in a buffer, stops downloading from the receiver, and waits until the recording file is unlocked, at which time it writes the previously-downloaded data to the recording file and continues downloading from the data receiver. So long as the buffer in the receiver does not overflow, no data will be lost as a result of a file access conflict.
• Neuroarchiver 140: The Recorder no longer stops running when it finds that the recording file has been locked by some other process. Instead, the Recorder issues a warning and continues trying to write data to the file. Each time the recording file is locked, the Recorder can lose up to one recording interval (default is half a second) of data, but no more.
• Neuroarchiver 139: Add Export button to main window, which opens the Exporter. Playback jumping from Overview plots is double-click with mouse, not single click. Remove Zoom buttons from the value and amplitude plots.
• Neuroarchiver 138: Add Neuroarchiver_plot_values routine.
• Neuroarchiver 137: Add IP, Socket, and FV boxes to Recorder, and a receiver version menu button. We no longer have to open the Receiver Instrument to set up recording, but can use these new boxes directly. Correct fatal errors for long playback intervals applied to location tracker recordings. To jump to a point in an overview plot, we now click once, not twice. Eliminate the separate magnified views that used to pop up with a double-click on the signal and spectrum displays. Instead we have a Zoom button to enlarge and shrink each display. Add video_zoom parameter for video. Improve efficiency of label color changes by use of LWDAQ_set_fg and LWDAQ_set_bg.
• Neuroarchiver 136: Fix bugs in video playback while jumping between files. Background of Player state label turns blue during video playback. Verbose comments describe progress of video playback. Improve efficiency of video file navigation by implementing a video file cache containing names and times of recently-played videos.
• Neuroarchiver 135: Add synchronize flag to Recorder, to turn off synchronization at start of each newly-created archive.
• Neuroarchiver 134: Neuroarchiver sacrifices a fraction of a second of data each time it creates a new NDF file during recording, so as to guarantee long-term synchronization between the NDF time and the system time, despite differences in the data receiver clock and the system clock, and despite network interruptions and cable disconnections. Overview jumps to whole second boundaries in NDF file.
• Neuroarchiver 133: Correct bug in video navigation that causes jump failure with complaint about octal number. Video display window dimensions fixed by video_geometry parameter, allowing cameras to throttle back to lower resolution when they overheat without disrupting subsequent video viewing. Metric menu buttons in the Event Classifier map now invoke a map refresh automatically when one of the axes is changed.
• Neuroarchiver 132: Update handling of Videoarchiver libraries. Correct sign error in implementation of video latency.
• Neuroarchiver 131: A new routine for spectrographs: Neuroarchiver_contiguous_band_power allows us to obtain efficiently the power in contiguous bands between a lower and upper frequency. The Overview now applies the glitch filter, as specified in the Value versus Time settings, to the overview points.
• Neuroarchiver 130: The new Mark button inserts a jump link into the text window so that we can return to an interval later. Reprocessing an event library now sorts the events by event type. When we navigate with the Event buttons, such as Hop and Go, the Neuroarchiver includes a jump button in its text window, which allows us to return to this event later. Exchanged the position of the x and y menu buttons in the Event Classifier map. When we compare the events of a library, overlapping events receive a jump button so we can compare them by eye easily.