connect to Bonsai via the virtual serial COM using r2 state machine

chris

Hi Josh,

I am trying to send messages to Bonsai through the virtual serial COM on state machine r2 with v23 firmware.
Here is my matlab code:

function ConnectBonsai
% Open water Valve to clean the tube - LY, 12/19/2019
global BpodSystem
Interval = 5 ;

%% main section
for currentTrial=1:10
    sma = NewStateMatrix();

%         sma = AddState(sma, 'Name', 'GETSoftCode2APP', ...
%         'Timer', 0,...
%         'StateChangeConditions', {'APP_SoftCode10', 'SendSoftCode2APP'},...
%         'OutputActions', {});

    sma = AddState(sma, 'Name', 'SendSoftCode2APP', ...
        'Timer', 0.1,...
        'StateChangeConditions', {'Tup', 'Interval'},...
        'OutputActions', {'APP_SoftCode', 1});

    sma = AddState(sma, 'Name', 'Interval', ...
        'Timer', Interval,...
        'StateChangeConditions', {'Tup', '>exit'},...
        'OutputActions', {});

    SendStateMatrix(sma);
    RunStateMatrix();
    disp(['Trial #' num2str(currentTrial)]);

    if BpodSystem.Status.BeingUsed== 0
    return;
    end
end

end

Attached is my Bonsai workflow.
I am not sure about the settings in the BaudRate of CreateSerialPort node and the newline of SerialStringRead node.
Can you help me make this work?

Thanks,
Lei

Josh

Hello Lei,

I checked with the Bonsai dev team. The ability to write and read bytes to/from a USB serial port is still in progress.

For now they've shared a C# workaround for writing bytes from Bonsai to the state machine. I added it to Bpod_Gen2's dev branch here.
Usage notes are in the readme file.

Hopefully we'll have the ability to read bytes from the state machine soon!

-Josh

chris

Hi Josh,

Thank you so much for the solution. It works and is very convenient. I actually also need to send notification from bpod to Bonsai, which is not allowed by the WriteBytes script. I tried to achieve this using the soft code handler as you mentioned here (https://sanworks.io/forum/showthread.php?tid=3410&highlight=bonsai). However, I did not find a way to package the bytes into an OSC packet to let Bonsai receive the byte (using the CreateSerialPort and SerialStringRead node, Bonsai can listen to Bpod). It seems that I have to wait for the Bonsai update so that it can directly read bytes from this virtual USB serial port.

Thanks again,
Lei