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In COM we trust: Feasibility of USB-based event marking

Modern experimental research often relies on the synchronization of different events prior to data analysis. One way of achieving synchronization involves marking distinct events with electrical pulses (event markers or “TTL pulses”), which are continuously recorded with research hardware, and can l...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Appelhoff, Stefan, Stenner, Tristan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8613091/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33852129
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01571-z
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author Appelhoff, Stefan
Stenner, Tristan
author_facet Appelhoff, Stefan
Stenner, Tristan
author_sort Appelhoff, Stefan
collection PubMed
description Modern experimental research often relies on the synchronization of different events prior to data analysis. One way of achieving synchronization involves marking distinct events with electrical pulses (event markers or “TTL pulses”), which are continuously recorded with research hardware, and can later be temporally aligned. Traditionally, this event marking was often performed using the parallel port in standard personal computers. However, the parallel port is disappearing from the landscape of computer hardware, being replaced by a serial (COM) port, namely the USB port. To find an adequate replacement for the parallel port, we evaluated four microcontroller units (MCUs) and the LabJack U3, an often-used USB data acquisition device, in terms of their latency and jitter for sending event markers in a simulated experiment on both Windows and Linux. Our results show that all four MCUs were comparable to the parallel port in terms of both latency and jitter, and consistently achieved latencies under 1 ms. With some caveats, the LabJack U3 can also achieve comparable latencies. In addition to the collected data, we share extensive documentation on how to build and use MCUs for event marking, including code examples. MCUs are a cost-effective, flexible, and performant replacement for the disappearing parallel port, enabling event marking and synchronization of data streams.
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spelling pubmed-86130912021-12-10 In COM we trust: Feasibility of USB-based event marking Appelhoff, Stefan Stenner, Tristan Behav Res Methods Article Modern experimental research often relies on the synchronization of different events prior to data analysis. One way of achieving synchronization involves marking distinct events with electrical pulses (event markers or “TTL pulses”), which are continuously recorded with research hardware, and can later be temporally aligned. Traditionally, this event marking was often performed using the parallel port in standard personal computers. However, the parallel port is disappearing from the landscape of computer hardware, being replaced by a serial (COM) port, namely the USB port. To find an adequate replacement for the parallel port, we evaluated four microcontroller units (MCUs) and the LabJack U3, an often-used USB data acquisition device, in terms of their latency and jitter for sending event markers in a simulated experiment on both Windows and Linux. Our results show that all four MCUs were comparable to the parallel port in terms of both latency and jitter, and consistently achieved latencies under 1 ms. With some caveats, the LabJack U3 can also achieve comparable latencies. In addition to the collected data, we share extensive documentation on how to build and use MCUs for event marking, including code examples. MCUs are a cost-effective, flexible, and performant replacement for the disappearing parallel port, enabling event marking and synchronization of data streams. Springer US 2021-04-14 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8613091/ /pubmed/33852129 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01571-z Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Appelhoff, Stefan
Stenner, Tristan
In COM we trust: Feasibility of USB-based event marking
title In COM we trust: Feasibility of USB-based event marking
title_full In COM we trust: Feasibility of USB-based event marking
title_fullStr In COM we trust: Feasibility of USB-based event marking
title_full_unstemmed In COM we trust: Feasibility of USB-based event marking
title_short In COM we trust: Feasibility of USB-based event marking
title_sort in com we trust: feasibility of usb-based event marking
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8613091/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33852129
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01571-z
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