Tracking Plugin

Uses 2D position data from Bonsai to deliver closed-loop stimulation.

The original implementation of this plugin is described in Buccino et al. (2018) "Open source modules for tracking animal behavior and closed-loop stimulation based on Open Ephys and Bonsai" J Neural Eng 15 055002.

Installation

This plugin can be added via the Open Ephys GUI's built-in Plugin Installer. Press ctrl-P or ⌘P to open the Plugin Installer, browse to the "Tracking Plugin", and click the "Install" button. The Tracking Plugin should now be available to use.

Usage

Documentation related to the Tracking Plugin user interface and the required Bonsai configuration are available here.

Important: This plugin has been substantially updated for GUI version 0.6.x. Most notably, all of the functionality is now encapsulated into a single "Filter" plugin, rather than a Source, Filter, and Sink. If you've been using this plugin previously, please read through the documentation carefully to understand what has changed.

Building from source

First, follow the instructions on this page to build the Open Ephys GUI.

Important: This plugin is intended for use with the latest version of the GUI, 0.6.x. For a version that works with 0.5.x, please use the code on the archive branch.

Then, clone this repository into a directory at the same level as the plugin-GUI, e.g.:

Code
├── plugin-GUI
│   ├── Build
│   ├── Source
│   └── ...
├── OEPlugins
│   └── tracking-plugin
│       ├── Build
│       ├── Source
│       └── ...

Windows

Requirements: Visual Studio and CMake

From the Build directory, enter:

cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64 ..

Next, launch Visual Studio and open the OE_PLUGIN_tracking-plugin.sln file that was just created. Select the appropriate configuration (Debug/Release) and build the solution.

Selecting the INSTALL project and manually building it will copy the .dll and any other required files into the GUI's plugins directory. The next time you launch the GUI from Visual Studio, the Tracking Plugin should be available.

Linux

Requirements: CMake

From the Build directory, enter:

cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" ..
cd Debug
make -j
make install

This will build the plugin and copy the .so file into the GUI's plugins directory. The next time you launch the compiled version of the GUI, the Tracking Plugin should be available.

macOS

Requirements: Xcode and CMake

From the Build directory, enter:

cmake -G "Xcode" ..

Next, launch Xcode and open the tracking-plugin.xcodeproj file that now lives in the “Build” directory.

Running the ALL_BUILD scheme will compile the plugin; running the INSTALL scheme will install the .bundle file to /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/open-ephys/plugins-api. The Tracking Plugin should be available the next time you launch the GUI from Xcode.