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Shared capture parameters

Registered by TriggeredCaptureNode, so every plugin in this repository has them with the same names, defaults and ranges.

Editor front panel

Name Label Type Default Range Step Scope Locked while acquiring
channels Channels selected channels none any STREAM yes
pre_ms Pre float, ms 500 010000 10 PROCESSOR yes
post_ms Post float, ms 1000 1010000 10 PROCESSOR yes

channels

Which channels are analysed. Nothing is selected by default, and with nothing selected there is nothing to accumulate.

This is the main cost lever. Everything downstream — the ring buffer, the capture, the accumulators, the display — is linear in the number of selected channels.

Changing it resizes and clears the accumulators, so it is locked during acquisition.

pre_ms

Time before the trigger to analyse.

In the Receptive Field Bar Mapper this doubles as the baseline for the z-score: the spontaneous rate and its spread are both measured here. Too short and the z-scores are noise-scaled.

post_ms

Time from the trigger onwards to analyse.

In the Bar Mapper this is what limits how far along its axis the bar is followed — see Making the window and the sweep agree.

The ring buffer is sized from these

Capacity is twice the trial window, or a minimum number of seconds, whichever is larger. Triggers arriving faster than the window is long show up in MONITOR as QUEUED advancing while CAPTURED does not.

The trigger table

The trigger table is not a parameter in the Open Ephys sense; it is per-source state, persisted alongside the parameters in the plugin's CUSTOM_PARAMETERS block, in a saved session, and in a standalone trigger-settings file. See Triggers and messages.

Field XML attribute Default Notes
Name name Condition N Display label only; nothing matches against it
TTL line line as added 0-based in the file, 1-based in the table
Type type 1 (TTL_TRIGGER) 2 is MSG_TRIGGER, declared but not implemented
Colour colour from a palette ARGB
Arm pattern armPattern empty Empty = the source is not gated
Cancel pattern cancelPattern empty Empty = disabled
Commit pattern commitPattern empty Empty = captures accumulate immediately
Pending timeout pendingTimeoutMs 5000 Milliseconds. 0 disables expiry

pendingTimeoutMs defaults to 5000 ms, up from 2000 in 0.2.x. It has to outlast the gap between the TTL edge and the message that commits it. Sources in an existing signal chain keep whatever they were saved with.

Registered but not user-facing

Name Label Type Default Range Scope
trigger_line Trigger line int 0 -1255 PROCESSOR
trigger_type Trigger type int 1 13 PROCESSOR

The backing store for the trigger-source popup's currently edited row. The table is the UI for these; setting them directly moves the most recently added source.

Which of these count as analysis parameters

Only the three that decide the shape of a trial window — channels, pre_ms, post_ms — are analysis parameters in every plugin. Each plugin adds its own:

Plugin Adds to the analysis set
Triggered Average max_trials
Triggered Power every estimator parameter
Triggered Coherence every estimator parameter, plus shift_predictor
Receptive Field Bar Mapper nothing — every parameter it registers is read-time