Exercise 1: Make a square and play with it

The following bit of code will show a blue square for 500 ms and then exit out of the program.

import time
import sys
from psychopy import visual,event,core
 
win = visual.Window([400,400],color="black", units='pix') #open a window
square = visual.Rect(win,lineColor="black",fillColor="blue",size=[100,100]) #make a blue square
square.draw() #draw the square to the buffer
win.flip() #make the buffer visible
core.wait(.5) #pause for 500 ms (half a second)
win.close() #close the window -- don't need this if you're running this as a separate file
sys.exit()

2.2120 	WARNING 	Monitor specification not found. Creating a temporary one...

An exception has occurred, use %tb to see the full traceback.

SystemExit

/Users/glupyan/anaconda2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py:2889: UserWarning: To exit: use 'exit', 'quit', or Ctrl-D.
  warn("To exit: use 'exit', 'quit', or Ctrl-D.", stacklevel=1)

Go through each line and understand what it does. Then...

  1. Make the square red instead of blue

  2. Make the square appear for 1.5 secs.

  3. Show a red square for 1 s, then switch it to blue and show it for 1 s

  4. Make the square appear for 1.5 secs, then show a blank screen for 1 sec, then flash the square 3 times for 30 ms each.

  5. Show the following sequence: blue, red, blue, red, blue, red (with each square appearing for 1 s with a 50 ms blank screen in the middle).

  6. Show a red square for 1 s then change its orientation by 45-deg

    To change the orientation by a certain degree-value use square.setOri(value) where `value` is the new orientation.

  7. Now make a square rotate continuously, one full revolution (360 degrees) per second

    To increase orientation use `square.ori += value` where `value` is the value by which to increase the orientation.

  8. Make a rotating square stop rotating when you press the 's' key

    To accept keyboard input you'll want to check it event.getKeys(['s']) is True.

  9. Make a square stop rotating when you press 's' and then start rotating again when you press 'r'

  10. Display a blue square and increase its width (making it a rectangle) by 10 pixels whenever the user presses the left-arrow key. Decrease the width by 10 pixels when the user presses the right-arrow key

    The key codes for right and left arrows in PsychoPy are simply 'right' and 'left'
    To change the width use `square.size += [x,y]` where `x` and `y` are the values by which you want to change the size

  11. Make the rectangle decrease/increase its width by 10% of its current width with each keypress instead of 10 pixels

  12. Show two rotating squares simultaneously, one left of center rotating clockwise, the other right of center, rotating counterclockwise

  13. As time allows, do something that's not listed here (e.g., make it a pentagon instead of a square, make it pulsate, play a sound as it moves, bounce off walls.. be creative.