IMPORTANT: The Open Ephys GUI documentation has migrated to a new site – please visit https://open-ephys.github.io for the most up-to-date information.

The basics

Constructing the signal chain

...

Pressing Cmd-Delete (OS X) or Ctrl-Delete Backspace (Linux and Window) will clear all modules from all signal chains.

...

Most, but not all, modules will save their internal settings. For safety purposes, assume that any module will not reload its settings until you confirm that it does. If settings are not being loaded properly for a particular module, feel free to submit an issue on GitHub.

Recording

There are two places in which recording is configured:

• The file selector within the control panel (hidden by default, exposed with the arrow button). This determines the location of the saved data, as well as the strings to prepend or append to the data folder. If data has already been recorded, pressing the "+" button next to the file name automatically generates a new data folder.
• The channel selector drawer within each module editor determines which channels will be saved. By default, only continuous channels from source nodes and events from any node are saved. To save continuous channels from a any other particular module, first open the drawer by clicking the vertical lines on the right side of the module editor, then switch to the "REC" tab and highlight the channels you wish to save. It's possible to save a signal after every step in the processing pipeline, but we wouldn't recommend doing this unless you have a very fast machine with a lot of free disk space. At the moment, all channels must be saved at the same sample rate, but we're working on a way to downsample LFP channels.

...

In the case of a crash, it's important to replicate what you did. If you can do that, and you don't know how to fix it yourself, go ahead and submit an issue describing the problem. Include your operating system and machine specs if you think it might be relevant.

Issues can also be used to request new features. If you're unsure about whether or not a feature is realistic, don't hesitate to ask about it through the contact page.

Debug console

The GUI is able to send debug messages to a console. In many cases, the information displayed there can greatly help locate and solve an issue. The way to access the debug console varies depending on the operating system.

Linux

To display the debug console on Linux, just run the open-ephys application in a console terminal, the output will be displayed there.

MacOS

To display the debug console on MacOS, open a terminal, navigate to the directory where the GUI application is located and run it inside the console.

Due to the structure of MacOS app bundles, the whole command to run the GUI would be ./open-ephys.app/Contents/MacOS/open-ephys Run this command from the directory which contains the App bundle. Do not access the internal App directories and run ./open-ephys from there, as some features will not be available that way.

Windows

To display the debug console on Windows, follow the following steps:

1. Create a shortcut by right clicking the open-ephys executable and selecting the "Create shortcut" option
2. Right click the newly created shortcut and select "Properties"
3. In the shortcut properties page, add --console at the end of the Target line, which contains the path to the open ephys executable. Add it after any quotes, if there were any. Click OK once this has been done.
4. Every time you need to open the console, just run the GUI via this shortcut instead of the normal executable