Direct RT stimuli into to Media Lab

[jarvis24]

First of all, thanks for all the nice comments about features you have found useful

Wish I had an easy answer for you on this one but I'm a frayed knot. Hmm.

Only thing I can suggest off hand (without some excruciating programming on my part) is to write a short program that can read the csv log data from DirectRT. The log files contain the data you need I think and can be read pretty easily by any program using an input function. Once these values are found in the input file the same program could save them to your responses.xls file (if you want to get real fancy) or to an HTML file which could be presented within a specified region on any MediaLab screen. If you have access to a programmer, the code required for this would be pretty doable--probably less than an hour to read the log and output the values you want to an html file (which is really just a text file with an .htm file extension).

Then, you can just run the exe from within MediaLab after the DirectRT session but before the ML questions. An exe can be run silently in the background (no graphical interface or pause in ML):

From the user's guide re Executables in MediaLab:
Note that for all [..] item types, an executable file may be launched at the start of the item by adding a "c" parameter followed by the file name, e.g., (p7,cmyprog.exe) would cause myprog.exe to launch at the start of a 7pt scale response. This is especially useful for programs that should run silently in the background as MediaLab will not attempt to keep the program visually in the foreground unless it is launched via the Executable item type.

Now with all that said, what would be super crazy cool is a responses.xls file that could be accessed by BOTH DirectRT AND MediaLab during the same session. You know I have never even thought of that before (esp. given that DirectRT does not currently use that functionality). Hmm. Looks like we have another feature on our to-do list!

Let me know if you come up with something that works--I'm guessing many other users would love to know how you did it! And of course, please feel free to ask any additional questions or for help with it if you run into any trouble.