Module reference

Notes

Type an annotation during a session and it is written to CSV with the same host timestamps as every other module.

Use notes to mark events as they happen: the start of a condition, a participant’s comment, a wrong turn, an interruption. Each note is stamped from the same clock as the video, audio and instrument files, so it can be found in all of them afterwards.

Getting started

Enable the moduleCheck Notes in the Modules menu.
Start a sessionNotes can be posted only while a session is active. Posting without one shows a reminder.
Type and postType in the New Note field and press Enter or click Post.

The notes window

Notes window with the history of posted notes above the entry field — Notes window. Each posted note shows its time, the elapsed time since the recording started and which modules were recording.

The History panel lists the notes posted so far, each with the time it was posted in blue, the elapsed time since the recording started in green, and the modules that were recording at the time in purple. The New Note field and the Post button are below it.

What is written

One CSV per trial in the Notes folder, with one row per note. Each row is written as soon as you post it, so nothing is lost if the program stops later.

{session_dir}/Notes/{token}_NTS_trial001_notes.csv

Notes CSV, 8 columns

Column	Description
`trial`	Trial number
`module`	`Notes`
`device_id`	`notes`
`label`	The trial label, if any
`record_time_unix`	Host wall-clock time when you posted the note, six decimals
`record_time_mono`	Host monotonic clock at the same instant, nine decimals
`device_time_unix`	Always empty
`content`	The note text

Example row

1,Notes,notes,baseline,1774149600.123456,373267.749822011,,Participant started the task

The timestamp is the moment you pressed Enter, so a note lags the event it describes by however long it took you to type it. Type a short marker first and the detail afterwards if the timing matters.

Finding a note in the other files

Take the note’s record_time_mono and look for the nearest record_time_mono in any other module’s file. For video, that row’s frame_index is the frame to seek to. Synchronization has the code.

Settings

Setting	Default	Meaning
History limit	200	How many notes the History panel shows
Auto-start	Off	Open the notes file when the session starts, rather than when the first note is posted

Both are in the module’s configuration file.

Troubleshooting

Session Required appears

Start a session from the main window, then post the note again.

A note did not appear in the history

The field was empty, or the session was not active. Check the System Log in the main window for a write error.

The program stopped during a session

Notes are written to the CSV as they are posted. Open the file in the session folder; everything posted before the stop is there.