Real-time operating via Python

Question

So I am an inexperienced Python coder, with what I have gathered might be a rather complicated need. I am a cognitive scientist and I need precise stimulus display and butto

Answer 1

Because you are trying to get a scientific measurement on a time delay in millisecond precision, I cannot recommend any process that is subject to time slicing on a general purpose computer. Whether implemented in C, or Java, or Python, if it runs in a time-shared mode, then how can the result be verifiable? You could be challenged to prove that the CPU never interrupted the process during a measurement, thereby distorting the results.

It sounds like you may need to construct a dedicated device for this purpose, with a clock circuit that ticks at a known rate and can measure the discrete number of ticks that occur between stimulus and response. That device can then be controlled by software that has no such timing constraints. Maybe you should post this question to the Electrical Engineering exchange.

Without a dedicated device, you will have to develop truly real-time software that, it terms of modern operating systems, runs within the kernel and is not subject to task switching. This is not easy to do, and it takes a lot of effort to get it right. More time, I would guess, than you would spend building a dedicated software-controllable device for your purpose.