titta 2.0.6

Titta is a toolbox for using eye trackers from Tobii Pro AB with Python, specifically offering integration with PsychoPy. A Matlab version that integrates with PsychToolbox is also available from https://github.com/dcnieho/Titta. For a similar toolbox for SMI eye trackers, please see www.github.com/marcus-nystrom/SMITE.

Titta is an alternative to using the eye tracking functionality already available in PsychoPy (through ioHub). Instead of the general interface ioHub provides to many eye trackers, Titta is specifically designed to offer full access to the functionality of Tobii eye trackers, has an intuitive participant setup and calibration interface, and includes scripts for analysis of eye-tracking data.

Cite as: Niehorster, D.C., Andersson, R. & Nystrom, M. (2020). Titta: A toolbox for creating PsychToolbox and Psychopy experiments with Tobii eye trackers. Behavior Research Methods. doi: 10.3758/s13428-020-01358-8

For questions, bug reports or to check for updates, please visit https://github.com/marcus-nystrom/Titta.

To minimize the risk of missing samples, the current repository uses TittaPy (pip install TittaPy), a C++ wrapper around the Tobii SDK, to pull samples made available from the eye tracker.

To get started

If you know what you are doing, install Titta using: pip install titta or python -m pip install titta.

If you use a standalone PsychoPy installation, do the following steps:

1. Go to C:\Program Files\PsychoPy (or wherever you installed PsychoPy) and open a command prompt in the same folder as where you find python.exe (should be the main PsychoPy install folder). So the command prompt you have should start with something like C:\Program Files\PsychoPy>
2. Here you can then pip-install titta, by issuing a command like python -m pip install titta --upgrade.

Then run read_me.py from the 'demos' folder (first change the monitor settings and the eye tracker name in read_me.py). Reading through read_me.py should provide a good starting point for most users of Titta.

To get started with the Tobii Pro Lab integration

1. Open read_read_me_TalkToProLab.py in PsychoPy.
2. Download Tobii Pro Lab.
3. Open a new External Presenter Project in Pro Lab. The Project name must be the same as the project name in read_read_me_TalkToProLab.py.
4. Navigate to the 'record'-tab in Pro Lab, and make sure that the External presenter button is red and says 'not connected'.
5. In PsychoPy, run read_read_me_TalkToProLab.py (first change the monitor settings and the eye tracker name).

Tested on Windows 10 using PsychoPy 2022.1.3 using Python 3.8. Ideally, make sure that the eye tracker is detected and works in the Tobii Eye Tracker Manager before trying to use it with Titta.

Contents

The toolbox consists of two main parts:

The Titta.Connect and Tobii.MyTobii classes

The Titta module (which utilizes the Tobii module) is the main workhorse of this toolbox, providing a wrapper around the Tobii Pro SDK, and a convenient graphical user interface (rendered through PsychoPy) for participant setup, calibration and validation. Only the Titta.calibrate() participant setup and calibration interface requires PsychoPy.

These modules connect to Tobii via TittaPy. Although TittaPy is located in a separate repository, documentation for it is included here since it is powering the Titta and Tobii modules here.

The TalkToProLab class

The TalkToProLab class provides an implementation of Tobii Pro Lab's External Presenter interface, allowing experiments to be created and run from Python with PsychoPy or other presentation methods, while recording, project management, recording playback/visualization and analysis can be performed in Tobii Pro Lab.

Usage

As demonstrated in the demo scripts, the toolbox is configured through the following interface:

1. Retrieve (default) settings for eye tracker of interest: settings = Titta.getDefaults('tracker model name'); Supported eye trackers and their corresponding model names in the Tobii Pro SDK/Titta are:

   Eye tracker	Model name
   Tobii Pro Spectrum	Tobii Pro Spectrum
   Tobii Pro Fusion	Tobii Pro Fusion
   Tobii Pro TX300	Tobii TX300
   Tobii Pro T60 XL	Tobii T60 XL
   Tobii Pro Nano	Tobii Pro Nano
   Tobii Pro Spark	Tobii Pro Spark
   Tobii Pro X3-120	Tobii Pro X3-120 or Tobii Pro X3-120 EPU
   Tobii Pro X2-60	X2-60_Compact
   Tobii Pro X2-30	X2-30_Compact
   Tobii Pro X60	Tobii X60
   Tobii Pro X120	Tobii X120
   Tobii Pro T60	Tobii T60
   Tobii Pro T120	Tobii T120
   Tobii 4C (Upgrade Key required)	IS4_Large_Peripheral

   Eye trackers marked in bold font have been tested. Note that the VR eye trackers are not supported by Titta. Also note that the Tobii 4C cannot be used for research purposes without buying the Pro Upgrade Key, and is compatible with Titta only after this purchase. Unfortunately, the Pro Upgrade Key is no longer sold by Tobii.

2. Change settings from their defaults if wanted.

3. Create a Titta instance using this settings struct: tracker = Titta(settings);

4. Interact with the eye tracker using the Titta API.

5. When calling Titta.calibrate(), a participant setup and calibration interface is shown. For each screen, several keyboard hotkeys are available to activate certain functionality. By default, the hotkey for each button is printed in the button's label.

API

Titta module

Module-level functions

The below method can be called on the Titta module directly.

Construction

An instance of Titta for interaction with the eye tracker (a Titta.MyTobii instance) is constructed by calling the module-level constructor Titta.Connect() with either the name of a specific supported eye tracker model (in which case default settings for this model will be used) or with a settings struct retrieved from Titta.get_defaults(), possibly with changed settings (passing the settings object unchanged is equivalent to using the eye tracker model name as input argument).

Supported options

The get_defaults() method call returns the appropriate set of options for the indicated eye tracker.

Tobii module

Properties

The following methods are available for an instance of Tobii.MyTobii (as created by calling Titta.Connect).

Methods

The following methods are available for an instance of Tobii.MyTobii (as created by calling Titta.Connect).

TittaPy class

The TittaPy class can be used for interaction with the eye tracker's data streams. It is accessed via Tobii.MyTobii's buffer property. For instance, if tracker is your Tobii.MyTobii instance, then you can retrieve the recorded samples using tracker.buffer.consume_N(). The TittaPy methods and properties are documented in the TittaPy repository.

TalkToProLab class

Construction

An instance of TalkToProLab is constructed by calling TalkToProLab() and optionally providing two constructor arguments:

• project_name: (optional) the name of the External Presenter project that should be opened in Pro Lab
• dummy_mode: (optional) a bool indicating whether to run in dummy mode. Default: false.

Methods

The following method calls are available on a TalkToProLab instance. The majority of return types are the response dictionary, containing the operation name, the status code, and however many useful variables relevant to this operation. The status codes are as follows:
0: 'Operation successful',
100: 'Bad request',
101: 'Invalid parameter',
102: 'Operation was unsuccessful',
103: 'Operation cannot be executed in current state',
104: 'Access to the service is forbidden',
105: 'Authorization during connection to a service has not been provided',
201: 'Recording finalization failed'.