NWB Format

A Record Engine plugin for the Open Ephys GUI based on the Neurodata Without Borders 2.X specification.

Installation

This plugin can be added via the Open Ephys GUI's built-in Plugin Installer. First, make sure there are no Record Nodes in your signal chain. Then, press ctrl-P or ⌘P to open the Plugin Installer, browse to the "NWB Format" plugin, and click the "Install" button. The next time you add a Record Node to the signal chain, NWB2 will be available in the data format drop-down menu.

Usage

The specifications of NWB files written by the Open Ephys GUI are available here.

Building from source

First, follow the instructions on this page to build the Open Ephys GUI.

This plugin depends on the OpenEphysHDF5Lib common library. Make sure you build and install that first before you proceed with building NWBFormat plugin.

Important: This plugin is intended for use with the pre-release core application, version 0.6.0. The GUI should be compiled from the development-juce6 branch, rather than the master branch.

Then, clone this repository into a directory at the same level as the plugin-GUI, e.g.:

Code
├── plugin-GUI
│   ├── Build
│   ├── Source
│   └── ...
├── OEPlugins
│   └── nwb-format
│       ├── Build
│       ├── Source
│       └── ...

Windows

Requirements: Visual Studio and CMake

From the Build directory, enter:

cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64 ..

Next, launch Visual Studio and open the OE_PLUGIN_nwb-format.sln file that was just created. Select the appropriate configuration (Debug/Release) and build the solution.

Selecting the INSTALL project and manually building it will copy the .dll and any other required files into the GUI's plugins directory. The next time you launch the GUI from Visual Studio, NWB2 should appear as an data format option in the Record Node.

Linux

Requirements: CMake

From the Build directory, enter:

cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" ..
cd Debug
make -j
make install

This will build the plugin and copy the .so file into the GUI's plugins directory. The next time you launch the compiled version of the GUI, NWB2 should appear as an data format option in the Record Node.

macOS

Requirements: Xcode and CMake

From the Build directory, enter:

cmake -G "Xcode" ..

Next, launch Xcode and open the nwb-format.xcodeproj file that now lives in the “Build” directory.

Running the ALL_BUILD scheme will compile the plugin; running the INSTALL scheme will install the .bundle file to /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/open-ephys/plugins-api. NWB2 should now appear as an data format option in the Record Node.

Attribution

This plugin, along with the OpenEphysHDF5Lib, were developed collaboratively by Aaron Cuevas Lopez, Pavel Kulik, and Josh Siegle. It is based on the NWB Format Specification.