News in Tobii Studio 3.1
Tobii Studio 3.1 supports integration of Tobii TX300 Eye Tracker and StimTracker for Tobii TX300 Eye Tracker for reliable and accurate synchronization of screen stimuli, eye tracking data, and physiological data. Through light sensor triggers and external event registration features, screen changes can be detected and marked as events directly in the eye tracking data in Tobii Studio.
The highlights of Tobii Studio 3.1 are:
• Light sensor trigger support
• Support for external event registration
• Improved handling of prematurely ended recordings
• New Data export functionality
• Improved RTA feature
Click here to download Tobii Studio 3.1
Light sensor trigger support
A firmware update of TX300 Eye Tracker makes it possible to connect external devices to the eye tracker sync port (eye tracker firmware version 1.1 or higher). The devices can then produce binary trigger events that will appear in data coming from the eye tracker.
To support external sensors for detecting stimuli changes, a light sensor trigger feature has been introduced in Tobii Studio 3.1. To trigger a light sensor when stimuli changes on screen a colored square can be added to a predefined corner on the stimuli. The square will change color from white to black or from black to white when a new stimulus is shown.
This functionality is applicable for image stimuli only and the light sensor trigger can be customized for size and position.
Support for external event registration
Binary trigger events will be accessible under two tabs in Tobii Studio: under the Replay tab as events on the timeline and the tab’s Events list, and as data available for export under the Data Export tab.
Events that appear under the Replay tab indicate when the binary signal from the external device changes. When the signal changes from ‘Off’ to ‘On’, the event EventMarkerOn will appear on the timeline and in the Events list, and when the signal changes from ‘On’ to ’Off’ the event EventMarkerOff will appear. Event markers can be used to automatically generate segments and scenes for data analysis and presentation.
The events appearing in the Replay tab indicate when the binary signal from the external device changes. When the signal changes from off to on, the event, EventMarkerOn, will appear on the timeline and in the Events list, and when the signal changes from on to off, the event, EventMarkerOff, will appear. The event markers can be used to automatically generate segments and scenes for data analysis and presentation.
Under the Data Export tab, events can be found in two data types. The first data type comprises events that indicate a change from one state to another, i.e. when the input signal from the external device changes. This data type will be available as StudioEvents and include EventMarkerOn and EventMarkerOff values. These events will only appear in an export when the events are registered and therefore associated with one timestamp each.
The second data type that is relevant when using an external device that generates event data is the EventMarkerValue data type, which reports the signal registered by the eye tracker. The values of this data type are either 1 (when the binary signal on the TX300 Eye Trackers sync port is set to ‘On’) or 0 (when the binary signal is set to ‘Off’). As the registered signal will be continuous, each sample received from the eye tracker will be associated with a value for this data type.
Improved handling of prematurely ended recordings
Recordings made in Tobii Studio can be ended prematurely for a number of internal and external reasons. This Tobii Studio version adds improved support for repairing such recordings so that data and video collected up to the end of the recording can be used for analysis.
Data export has new columns for Glasses data
As of this Tobii Studio release, Data export will include three new data types related to Glasses data recordings: PupilGlassesRight (estimated value of the right pupil size in relation to the average value of the pupil during the calibration), IRMarkerCount (the number of IR-Markers detected in the current sample), and IRMarkerInfo (the ID numbers of the IR-Markers detected in the current sample).
Data export enables export to Excel
In addition to the tab separated values (.tsv) export format, it is also possible to export to Microsoft Excel .xlsx file format. However, limitations in that format only allow for 1,048,576 rows in an exported file.
Improvement of RTA feature
When doing a retrospective think aloud (RTA) recording after task completion, it is common practice to use the full-screen functionality when replaying the recording of the task for the participant of the test. In Tobii Studio 3.1, it is possible to launch replays of user recordings in full-screen mode directly when starting the RTA recording.