Program Structure

In This Section

• Structure Overview
• Execution Logic

Structure Overview

StimControl is a programmatically generated MATLAB app. It uses handle structs and similar data types to manage its connected features:

• GUI features are managed in h
• connected devices are managed in d
• save paths are managed in path
• general protocol parameters are managed in g
• trial-specific stimulation parameters are managed in p
• the timer that manages experiment execution logic is stored in t
• state machine flags are handled in f

The Execution State Machine

In the Session tab, state logic is handled jointly by a timer, t, the dependent variable status, and the flags struct f. When the program is in different states, different buttons are made available. See the figure below for a full overview of the state machine logic.

Flags

• stopTrial - set to true when the STOP button is pressed
• startTrial - set to true when the START or START SINGLE TRIAL buttons are pressed, or after the inter-trial interval during an experiment
• passive - set to true when the START PASSIVE button is pressed
• pause - set to true when the PAUSE button is pressed
• resume - set to true when the RESUME button is pressed
• runningExperiment - set to true when START button is pressed
• trialLoaded - set to true when a trial has been loaded, used to track individual trial loading over an experiment
• trialFinished -

States

Status Name	Meaning	Lamp Colour	Start	Stop	Pause	Resume	StartPassive	SingleTrial
Not Initialised	devices not ready	dark grey	n	n	n	n	y	n
No protocol loaded	Meaning	LampColour	Start	Stop	Pause	Resume	StartPassive	SingleTrial
Ready	Trial loaded	green	y	n	n	n	y	y
Running	Actively stimulating / acquiring	orange	n	y	n	n	n	n
Inter-trial	running an experiment, in the inter-trial interval	white	n	y	y	n	n	n
Paused	inter-trial, with the inter-trial countdown paused	teal	n	y	n	y	n	n
Stopping	Stopping a trial and flushing data	red	n	n	n	n	n	n
Awaiting Trigger	in passive mode, will enter 'running' when external trigger is received	teal	n	y	n	n	n	n
Error	Something has gone wrong	red	-	-	-	-	-	-