Builder

Building experiments in a GUI

Making your experiments using the PsychoPy^® builder is the approach that we generally recommend. Why would we (a team of programmers) recommend using a GUI?:

• It’s much faster to make experiments

• Your experiment will be less likely to have bugs (experiments coded from scratch can very easily contain errors - even when made by the best of programmers!).

• You can easily make an experiment to run online in a browser. PsychoPy^® builder view is writing you a python script “under the hood” of your experiment, but if you want to run an experiment online it can also compile a javascript version of your task using PsychoPy’s sister library PsychoJS. Remember that PsychoJS is younger than PsychoPy^® - so remember to check the status of online options before making an experiment you plan to run online! The easiest way to host a study online from PsychoPy^® is through the Pavlovia^® platform, and PsychoPy^® builder has inbuilt integration to interact with this platform.

There are a number of tutorials on how to get started making experiments in builder on the PsychoPy Youtube channel as well as several written tutorials and Experiment Recipes. You can also find a range of materials for teaching using builder view.

Contents:

• Builder concepts
  • Routines and Flow
  • The components panel
  • Making experiments to go online
• Routines
• Flow
  • Adding Routines
  • Loops
  • Using a Staircase
• Using a simple staircase
• Using a QUEST staircase
• Using a QUEST Plus staircase
• Blocks of trials and counterbalancing
  • Blocking similar conditions
  • Counterbalancing similar conditions
  • Counterbalancing different subtasks
• Components
  • Aperture Component
  • Audio Validator Routine
  • Brush Component
  • Button Box Component
  • Button Component
  • Camera Component
  • Code Component
  • Counterbalance Routine
  • Dots Component
  • Eyetracker Calibration Routine
  • Eyetracker Record Component
  • Eyetracker Validation Routine
  • Form Component
  • Grating Component
  • Image Component
  • Joy Buttons Component
  • Joystick Component
  • Keyboard Component
  • Microphone Component
  • Mouse Component
  • Movie Component
  • Panorama Component
  • Parallel Out Component
  • Pavlovia Survey Routine
  • Polygon Component
  • Progress Component
  • Region Of Interest Component
  • Resource Manager Component
  • Serial Out Component
  • Slider Component
  • Sound Component
  • Static Component
  • Text Component
  • Textbox Component
  • Unknown Component
  • Unknown Plugin Component
  • Variable Component
  • Visual Validator Routine
  • Voice Key Component
  • About Components
• Components which have moved to plugins
  • Emotiv Marking Component
  • Emotiv Record Component
  • ioLabs Response Box Component
  • Patch Component
  • Pump Component
  • Rating Scale Component
  • Reward Component
• Experiment settings
  • Settings
• Defining the onset/duration of components
  • Examples
• Generating outputs (datafiles)
• Common Mistakes (aka Gotcha’s)
  • General Advice
  • My stimulus isn’t appearing, there’s only the grey background
  • The loop isn’t using my Excel spreadsheet
  • I just want a plain square, but it’s turning into a grating
  • The code snippet I’ve entered doesn’t do anything
  • My stimulus isn’t changing as I progress through the loop
  • I’m getting the error message AttributeError: ‘unicode object has no attribute ‘XXXX’
  • The window opens and immediately closes
• Compiling a Script
• Set up your monitor properly
• Creating a Google Cloud Speech API key
  • Steps

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