LambdaExpt is a simple framework for running Psychology Experiments on Amazon Web Services Lambdas. These lambdas allow us to both run experiments cheaply and at scale. This framework has been developed by the Complex Human Data Hub at the University of Melbourne. It can be used to run individual experiments, experiments on Mechanical Turk, and Research For Experience (REP) experiments.

Below gives you a brief over of how to use the framework, please read the wiki for more detailed documentation: https://github.com/complex-human-data-hub/LambdaExpt/wiki

INSTALLATION

Linux or Mac

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install pip --upgrade
pip install -r requirements.txt

Windows

python3 -m venv venv
.\venv\Scripts\activate
pip install pip --upgrade
pip install -r requirements.txt

STARTING THE LOCAL SERVER

To develop run flask server locally

Linux

FLASK_APP=experiment.py flask run

Windows

python experiment.py

ACCESSING YOUR EXPERIMENT

If you are developing locally the change to a localhost address, for example: http://localhost:5000/unique-expt

or in production: https://example.com/unique-expt

ADDING PARAMETERS TO PASS TO PYTHON

You can also add parameters to pass to the get_data(opts) function mentioned below: http://localhost:5000/expt?unique-expt?foo=bar&foo2=bar2 or https://example.com/unique-expt?foo=bar&foo2=bar2

BASIC STRUCTURE OF YOUR EXPERIMENT

• expt_config.py - this is where your python code goes. You will setup your experimental stimuli in this file.

You can optionally provide a flask Blueprint using the 'custom_code' variable. Flask Blueprints allow you to define your own routes.

Functions in expt_config.py:

  get_data(opts)
    foo = opts.get('foo')
    return object_to_pass_to_javascript

• templates/exp.html This is were you will create your experiments HTML

• static This is a directory for you static files: images, css, js