ZMQInterface

A plugin for open-ephys enabling the interfacing of ZeroMQ clients to open ephys. The interface exposes all data and events and allows to provide events to the application, enabling the creation of advanced visualization and monitoring add-ons.

A tutorial on how to write a python module will follow soon, however, the code in the examples under the python_clients directory may serve as good guidance for now. Note that the application may be written in any language/platform supporting ZeroMQ.

Installation Instruction

At the moment, the plugin is compatible with the Linux and MacOSX versions of Open Ephys. I don't have Windows development expertise, so I will not port it to Windows myseld. If you are interested in porting it to Windows, this is probably a fairly simple task for an experienced developer. Please do contact me, and I will support the port as far as I can.

Compile from source code

The Plugin is organized so that it can be compiled as much as possible outside of the main open-ephys source tree. Under Linux, a symlink to the Source/Plugins directory is however necessary.

To compile, extract in a folder just outside the Open Ephys plugin-GUI source tree e.g.

$ ls src
plugin-GUI/
ZMQInterface/
etc...

The rest of the procedure is system dependent

####Linux

• edit build-linux.sh to change ZMQ_PREFIX to the location where ZeroMQ is installed
• cd PythonPlugin
• run ./build-linux.sh. The Plugin should be copied to the neighboring plugin-GUI source tree.

####MacOSX

• With a different Python distribution: in the same file, edit HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS and LIBRARY_SEARCH_PATHS to the proper places so that ZeroMQ may be found.
• Open Builds/MacOS/PythonPlugin.xcodeproj in XCode and compile

Binary installation

A binary installation (Linux only for the time being) is provided here

• Use the Binary-distributed version of Open-Ephys or compile it from source with the Release configuration.
• Copy PythonPlugin.so to the plugins directory, and you are done.