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Getting Started

This page gets a toolbox tool onto your computer — no coding background needed. Every tool here is a program you launch and point at a folder of data, either by clicking through an installer or by typing one line into a terminal window.

If you're setting up a full coding environment to change the toolbox's code yourself, see Development Setup in For Contributors instead — this page only covers running the tools as they already are.

How this fits together

Working with your data happens in three steps, always in this order:

  1. Prepare your data — crosscheck your raw recordings and convert them into the standard folder layout analysis expects ("BIDS"). See Crosschecking, then FOH Crosscheck or Crane Crosscheck.
  2. Process your data — run the processing tool for your experiment. See Process Your Data.
  3. Check your output — review the QC plots the processing step produces before you trust the numbers. See Check Your Output.

The rest of this page just covers getting the toolbox installed; each step above has its own page with the details.

Installing the toolbox

A versioned installer, plus every tool's standalone .exe on its own, is built automatically and attached to this repo's GitHub Releases page every time a new version is published.

To get it:

  1. On GitHub, open this repo's Releases page (the "Releases" link in the right-hand sidebar of the repo's main page, or .../releases at the end of the repo URL).
  2. Pick the release you want — usually the latest one at the top.
  3. Under Assets, download the installer (named e.g. VRLabToolboxSetup-v1.2.0.exe — the version number matches the release you picked) and run it.

The installer puts every tool's .exe in one folder, adds that folder to your PATH automatically (current user only — no admin rights needed), and adds a desktop shortcut — look for this icon VRLab Toolbox icon — to a launcher with a button for each GUI tool (see FOH Crosscheck and Crane Crosscheck). Once it's done, open a new terminal window (the PATH change only applies to terminals opened after installing) and run a tool exactly like the commands used on the next pages, for example:

vrlab_crane_process --version

Checking it's the right file, and getting help

Two flags work without needing to run a full pipeline:

vrlab_crane_process --help       # lists every argument and option, with what each does
vrlab_crane_process --version    # confirms which version you downloaded

--help is the fastest way to check argument order or an option's name without coming back to this page. --version is worth checking against the release you meant to download, especially if more than one version's .exe is floating around a shared machine.

macOS/Linux

Only a Windows installer is currently built automatically. On other platforms, someone will need to build a standalone copy for you first — ask whoever manages the toolbox for your team.

Next: Crosschecking — step 1, preparing a raw recording session before it's processed.