Hi Josh,

I am trying to add a feature for manually delivering water reward in a protocol for habituation (spontaneous licking triggers reward). I am using TrialManager and my main loop looks like this:

%% Main trial loop
for currentTrial = 1:MaxTrials

    if BpodSystem.Status.BeingUsed == 0; return; end % If user hit console "stop" button, end session
    [sma, S] = PrepareStateMachine(S); % Prepare next state machine.
    % Since PrepareStateMachine is a function with a separate workspace, pass any local variables needed to make
    % the state machine as fields of settings struct S e.g. S.learningRate = 0.2.
    SendStateMachine(sma, 'RunASAP'); % With TrialManager, you can send the next trial's state machine while the current trial is ongoing
    RawEvents = TrialManager.getTrialData; % Hangs here until trial is over, then retrieves full trial's raw data
    if BpodSystem.Status.BeingUsed == 0; return; end % If user hit console "stop" button, end session
    HandlePauseCondition; % Checks to see if the protocol is paused. If so, waits until user resumes.
    TrialManager.startTrial(); % Start processing the next trial's events (call with no argument since SM was already sent)
    
    %If trial data was returned from last trial, update plots and save data
    if ~isempty(fieldnames(RawEvents)) % If trial data was returned from last trial, update plots and save data
        BpodSystem.Data = AddTrialEvents(BpodSystem.Data,RawEvents); % Computes trial events from raw data
        BpodSystem.Data.TrialSettings(currentTrial) = S; % Adds the settings used for the current trial to the Data struct (to be saved after the trial ends)
        
        % define outcome types
        if ~isnan(BpodSystem.Data.RawEvents.Trial{currentTrial}.States.reward(1))
            Outcomes(currentTrial) = 1; % Hit
        else
            Outcomes(currentTrial) = 2; % Miss
        end
        BpodSystem.Data.Outcomes = Outcomes;
        
        % Update online plots
        trial_info_plot(currentTrial,time_temp)
        lick_responses_plot(BpodSystem.Data, currentTrial, MaxTrials)
        trial_outcome_plot(Outcomes, currentTrial,f)
        
        % Saves the field BpodSystem.Data to the current data file
        SaveBpodSessionData; 
    end
end

and my state machine looks like this:

function [sma, S] = PrepareStateMachine(S)

S = BpodParameterGUI('sync', S); % Sync parameters with BpodParameterGUI plugin

sma = NewStateMachine(); % Initialize new state machine description
sma = SetGlobalTimer(sma, 'TimerID', 1, 'Duration', 1);  % set response window

sma = AddState(sma, 'Name', 'trial_start', ... 
    'Timer', 0,...
    'StateChangeConditions', {'GlobalTimer1_End', 'exit','BNC1High', 'reward','SoftCode1','reward'},... 
    'OutputActions', {'GlobalTimerTrig',1}); 

sma = AddState(sma, 'Name', 'reward', ... 
    'Timer', S.GUI.Rewad_Amount,...
    'StateChangeConditions', {'Tup', 'continue_trial'},...
    'OutputActions', {'Valve1',1 }); 

sma = AddState(sma, 'Name', 'continue_trial', ... 
    'Timer', 0,...
    'StateChangeConditions', {'GlobalTimer1_End', 'exit','SoftCode1','reward'},...
    'OutputActions', {});

However, there is no response when I input SendBpodSoftCode(1) in the MATLAB command window during the trial. When I terminate the session, I got an error message saying "Error sending soft code:Bpod must be in a trial". I am quite confused because I was sending the soft code during a trial.

Do you have any idea how I could solve this problem?

Thank you in advance.

Best,
Tin