Development Roadmap

[jsiegle]

In our recent user survey, a number of respondents requested more information about where the GUI is headed. To facilitate this, we've compiled a list of major ongoing/upcoming projects, available below.

Most of these were already being tracked as Projects, but we wanted to put everything in one place in order to solicit feedback from the community. If there are any critical features or fixes missing from this list, or you’d like some clarification on any of the items, please let us know in the comments!

Version 0.6.0

• Update to JUCE 6
  • most up-to-date version of the JUCE library
  • adds the ability to create UI elements with HTML/CSS/JavaScript, which can be iterated faster than C++
• Add ability to name subprocessors
• Make it possible to merge/split individual sub-processors
• Deprecate data formats: KWIK, NWB 1.0 (replace with NWB 2.0, using latest HDF5 library)
• Increment plugin API version (all plugins will need to be re-compiled or upgraded)
• Incorporate ProcessorGraphHttpServer from carmenalab fork; see Interest in improvements for streaming / API capabilities of OpenEphys? #372 for more details

Spike Detector

• Make waveform transmission optional – can send only peak amplitude or spike time, to speed up processing when detecting spikes across many channels
• Remove unused options
• Add option to set threshold levels automatically

Audio Monitoring

• Make the audio monitor its own plugin, with ability to select individual channels
• Add built-in high-pass filter

Default Signal Chains

• The first time the GUI is launched, the user should be presented with several options for default signal chains that can be loaded automatically

File Reader

• Add ability to read in events
• Display a timeline of the file that allows scrubbing to different locations
• Make it compatible with Binary, Open Ephys, and NWB 2.0 formats

Plugins

Neuropixels

• Add ability to output channel map file
• Add probe activity view that displays RMS amplitude of each channel
• Auto-scan feature to select different channel blocks
• Attach names to sub-processors (e.g. ProbeA-LFP, instead of 100.1)
• Compile Neuropixels plugin for Linux

NIDAQ Plugin

• Compile for Linux
• Add NIDAQ Output module (initially optimized for optogenetic stimulation)

Acquisition Board + Intan RHD USB Interface

• Make separate plugins for each, which automatically load the correct bitfile
• Add a Sink plugin for controlling digital outputs
• New documentation site dedicated to the Acquisition Board (see https://open-ephys.github.io/acq-board-docs/)

[NEW] Source Simulator

• Test your signal chain with variable numbers of channels / spike rates

Documentation

Add tutorials for users and developers

• Synchronizing multiple devices
• Adding a button to a plugin
• Measuring closed-loop latency
• Streaming data to/from Open Ephys
• First steps for offline analysis
• Creating a plugin with its own visualizer

Offline analysis

• Consolidate Python code into open-ephys-python-tools (preview version available here)
• Consolidate Matlab code into open-ephys-matlab-tools (preview version available here)