Synchronising with External Programs

When connecting StimControl to some external program with a comparable temporal precision, it may be necessary to synchronise between the two programs. Although StimControl saves to timestamped folders, there is considerable latency (on the order of seconds) between the creation of these folders and the beginning of acquisition. There are two ways to achieve precise alignment, only one of which has currently been tested:

TTL Pulses

The most reliable way to extract synchronisation information between two programs is to send TTL pulses between the devices. Connect an I/O wire between a StimControl DAQ and an externally controlled DAQ, and send a signal from one to the other at the point of synchronisation. These signals can later be aligned with a precision of around 1/2 the sampling rate of the DAQ receiving the signal, which should be sufficient for nearly all applications.

Trigger Lines

It is theoretically possible to set up a trigger line for some DAQs. This has not been tested in StimControl at time of writing, and latency has not been verified. It feels relevant to mention, though, in case some enterprising member of the public wants some specific functionality only possible through a trigger line.