Setup

Create a new experiment on the PCIbex Farm (create an account first if you don’t already have one).

Open your project (click the name of your experiment) and find the text Update from git repo on the page: below it, you should see two input boxes and a Sync button—if you can’t see them, just click on the text to unfold.

In the first input box (repo url) enter https://github.com/PennController/TimedPictureSelection
Then click on the Sync button. You should see several filenames highlighted in red. It means that you successfully imported the resources that we will be using in this tutorial.

The script editor

Find the Script section. You should see a file named main.js. Open the script editor by clicking on the file.

Your file main.js should be rather empty for now: we will script our experiment from scratch. You will spend most of your time editing this file, so let’s get familiar with the interface of the script editor.

The top bar contains two links: one link to the PennController documentation and one link to the original Ibex manual. They are very helpful, e.g., when you can’t remember the name of a command or what it does.

As you start typing text in the editor, you will see a modular window appear. This is another feature that will help you with the commands: it will suggest command names for autocompletion. Start typing Pe and then press Enter/Return on your keyboard to write PennController in your script.
The autocompletion window is particularly helpful in reminding you of the exact names of the commands, for example which characters are lower- or upper-case. It also gives you very short descriptions of the commands. Once again, use the PennController documentation link if you need more information about the commands.

Finally, the bottom bar contains four buttons:

The first one, Discard changes (same as the cross button at the top-right corner) closes the editor without saving its content: any changes are permanently lost.
The second one, Save changes, simply updates the content of your file without closing the editor.
The third button, Save and close, does the same thing but additionally closes the editor.
The last button, Save and test, also updates the content of your file and opens your updated experiment in a new window afterward. This is probably the button you will use the most.

Next: Now that you are familiar with the script editor, we can start writing some code Text, Pictures and Keys.