Open Ephys crashes when Bonsai starts sending OSC messages

[cspurandare]

Hi all, we obtained our first neuropixel recordings (using open ephys gui) last week, where the stimulus was created and presented with bonsai. To sync these two, I tried using the OSC messaging, or ttls from bonsai routed to the 385th channel or both simultaneously. Although it did work sometimes, I noticed -

1. If both the TTL and osc were communicating, the open ephys gui would sometimes hang/crash when bonsai started. This crash was not accompanied by any error message in the log as far as I can tell. The crash was actually more of a "hang", where LFP and AP band signal just flattened out in the display and nothing was recorded anymore, but the gui showed that it's still recording (red bar at the top, timer still increasing). The CPU requirement tab was below 25-30% so I don't think it was being overwhelmed. I am recording on a 20 thread 10 core computer, using an SSD card, but looking at the SSD card performance, it sometimes does peak close to 100%.

2. On other occasions, the system worked, and I could see ttls from bonsai appearing in the last channel (385) in open ephys gui. Checking later the osc messages were stored ok too. But after running for 2 to 3 hours, the open ephys gui would randomly crash (flatlined, but gui shows the recording is still going on, as above).

I tried with 0.6.1 and 0.6.4 and saw these issues in both.
Has anyone else experienced this behavior and know of any solutions/fixes? Thanks in advance!

[jsiegle]

We have tested the same configuration for many hours of recording without observing any crashes, so we're not sure exactly what this is related to. For now, we recommend only using the OSC Events plugin for closed-loop stimulation experiments, rather than for inter-process synchronization. We will leave this issue open as we continue to troubleshoot.