This version of the Coxlab Eyetracker has added features. This includes modifications in order to use the program with ferrets rather than with mice as well as support for both UDP and Named Pipes in order to transfer information about the gaze of the ferret.
The code contained in this repository implements a self-calibrating eyetracker as described in the following paper:
Davide F. Zoccolan, Brett J. Graham, David D. Cox (2010) A self-calibrating, camera-based eye tracker for the recording of rodent eye movements. Frontiers in Neuroscience 4.
Please see http://www.rowland.harvard.edu/cox/pdfs/fnins-04-00193-1.pdf for details.
The development of this system was supported by the National Science Foundation (IOS0947777).
NOTE: these instructions are a work in progress, so please let us know if you run into trouble, so that we can improve the documentation of this process
The software has so far only been tested and used on Mac OS X, though it should work, in principle, on any platform. Please contact us if you have success in running it on other platforms.
The GUI portion of the project depends on glumpy, which in turn depends on the AntTweakBar library. A fork of AntTweakBar suitable for use with this project can be found here, along with instructions on how to build and install it.
Once this library is installed, assuming you have a complete, working Python on your system, installing the program should be as easy as downloading the code and running:
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install --no-deps -e .
This will install code, linking to wherever you've checked out the code, enabling you to pull new updates or make your own changes without having to reinstall. If you want to install the code "normally",
pip install .
or even
python setup.py install
Will do the trick.
The tracker can then be run from a shell with the command
coxlab_eyetracker
Depending on the state of your Python install, you might run into a few problems. If you don't already have it, you might need the distribute module. You can install this by running the distribute_install.py script included in this distribution. You'll also need scipy and numpy and a host of other "standard" Python modules. Since these can sometimes be tricky to install for new users, we highly recommend downloading the Enthought Python Distribution, which is a complete, batteries-included, free-for-academics Python distribution. We've run the tracker against the latest 64-bit EPD and found everything works well.
Let us know if you run into any trouble.