Interfacing RB-834 with E-prime

I have been having issues in actually getting this response box to interface with E-Prime. Windows XP allowed me to install the drivers and recognizes the box as new hardware, and I have programmed my experiment as to accept standard response box input. However, E-Prime still does not seem to recognize inputs from the box, from either of the switch settings provided. Would someone be able to help me with this interfacing issue?

Adam

Hi Adam,

Please see the “Known Issues” section at the bottom of this page. If it doesn’t help you resolve the issue, then please let me know what is the exact error message that E-Prime is giving you.

Hisham.

Same problem, different solution?

Hello,
We have been trying to get RB-834 to run with E-Prime as well (E-Prime version 2.0 Professional) and have not succeeded. We followed the instructions on your support page, the pad is connected to USB port 4, we matched baud rates with E-Prime (19200), we only plugged in the pad after the computer had booted and the response pad works fine with Experiment Builder on the same machine, so I assume it is installed correctly and recognized by the computer.
Still, when running a very basic E-Prime script that uses the response pad we get this error message:

Run-time Error (Line 275) 10051: An error occurred while attempting to open the device

Device Name: SRBOX
Error: 0x00004a46
Message: 'Unable to open the SRBOX: 0x00000103

The SRBox Device Driver may not be installed’

I have read an older post about a similar problem ( http://community.cedrus.com/showthread.php?t=123) where it seemed like there might not be an easy general solution to this problem - has this changed in the meantime? Is there anything more you can advise me to do to have the response pad be recognized?
Thank you very much for your help in advance,
Best,
Juliane

Hi Juliane,

In the Device Manager, have you checked what COM port number your device appears as? You need to look for it under the section Ports (COM & LPT) of the Device Manager.

And yes, you can assume that the response pad is installed correctly if Experiment Builder can see it.

Hisham.

Hi Hisham,
the pad is recognized in COM port 4. Is there anything else we can check or do?
Thanks,
Juliane

Are the DIP switches in the proper position? Experiment Builder and E-Prime require different switch settings.

Hi Hisham,
yes, as I said in my first post we followed the instruction on your instruction page carefully. We tried both the indicated switch settings and changed the baud rates in E-Prime accordingly, though the lower baud rate setting wasn’t accepted by E-Prime. So we stuck to switch 1 being up and E-Prime expecting a baud rate of 19200. I wanted to know whether there is anything beyond the instructions on your web page that we can do to get our response pad recognized. Is there anything like that?
Thanks,
Juliane

Alas, I can’t think of anything else beyond that.

By the way, installing E-Prime 1.2 on the same machine (in addition to E-Prime 2.0, which we were using before) solved the problem. Probably fixed a driver issue with the later release or something. Now both E-prime versions can use the button box.

Thank you!

Thank you for posting a follow up note to let me and others in your situation know what the solution was. I appreciate it.

Similar problem

I am also having problem of using RB-830 with E-prime 2.0 professional.

I have carefully followed every instructions about this issue, including those you have listed above, and firmware updated to the c18.hex version.

I am sure that the response pad is detected as I can use it in my superlab experiment (it prompts out and asks whether I would like to change to XID mode).

When it comes to E-prime, I don’t see the error you posted above. I can launch the experiment as normal, but I receive no response no matter which key I press on the RB-830 pad.

Nothing changes after several replugging, and flipping the 1st and 3rd switches.

Is there something wrong with the driver’s compatibility with the new E-prime?
Can anybody help? Thanks very much in advance.

I don’t have an obvious answer, but at least I’ll try to explain how things work to help narrow things down.

First, and at the risk of stating the obvious, the fact that SuperLab recognizes the response pad means that the USB driver is installed and working fine.

Next, it is important to understand how Cedrus makes the response pads work with E-Prime. It does so by emulating PST’s own Serial Response Box (SRB), which in turn works by sending a constant stream of bytes to the computer. This can be set to 800 or 1600 cps (characters per second).

I am no E-Prime expert (far from it, actually), but my understanding is that E-Prime looks for this stream of bytes to determine whether the response pad is connected or not. For example, I’m pretty sure that you will get an error message if you set the COM port number incorrectly. Since you are not getting an error message, to me this seems to leave only the following possible scenarios:

  • The baud rate is set incorrectly
  • The characters per second setting is incorrect
  • Less likely, but the COM port might be set incorrectly and another device happens coincidentally to be sending data to the computer
When you find out what the problem is, me and other forum readers would appreciate it very much if you let us know what the problem was as 'juliane' did.

[QUOTE=Hisham;2265]I don’t have an obvious answer, but at least I’ll try to explain how things work to help narrow things down.

First, and at the risk of stating the obvious, the fact that SuperLab recognizes the response pad means that the USB driver is installed and working fine.

Next, it is important to understand how Cedrus makes the response pads work with E-Prime. It does so by emulating PST’s own Serial Response Box (SRB), which in turn works by sending a constant stream of bytes to the computer. This can be set to 800 or 1600 cps (characters per second).

I am no E-Prime expert (far from it, actually), but my understanding is that E-Prime looks for this stream of bytes to determine whether the response pad is connected or not. For example, I’m pretty sure that you will get an error message if you set the COM port number incorrectly. Since you are not getting an error message, to me this seems to leave only the following possible scenarios:

  • The baud rate is set incorrectly
  • The characters per second setting is incorrect
  • Less likely, but the COM port might be set incorrectly and another device happens coincidentally to be sending data to the computer
When you find out what the problem is, me and other forum readers would appreciate it very much if you let us know what the problem was as 'juliane' did.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for your reply.

Regarding to point 1, is there any other method to change the baud rate other than flipping the switches at the back of the response pad? If no, then the baud rate should be set correctly (1 up 2, 3, 4 down gets me no error message but it’s just not responsive; 1 and 3 up others down gets me an error about something wrong in baud rate).

Point 2, the characters per second thing I have no idea…where can I see the settings? Is it in the e-prime program or something set in the response pad?

Point 3 is interesting. I start to think that the reason why I didn’t get an error message like the replies above is because I really have a PST SRB 200A, and therefore I would have the driver in my computer. However, unplugging the PST SRB and restarting the computer and plugging in the response pad still doesn’t get me any success. On the contrary, I can use the PST SRB for the e-prime experiment, and this seems to reflect that the experiment setting is alright to accept “real” PST SRB inputs, but just not the emulated ones.

Would the existence of the PST SRB be (one of) the cause(s) of my problem?

Thanks again for your help.

On the response pad, the only way to change the baud rate is indeed by flipping the switches. But the baud rate setting of the response pad should match the baud rate setting in E-Prime.

The same goes for the characters per second thing: also in E-Prime.

I doubt that the existence of a real PST SRB would affect anything. Do you have any extra switches connected to the back of the PST SRB?

[QUOTE=Hisham;2290]On the response pad, the only way to change the baud rate is indeed by flipping the switches. But the baud rate setting of the response pad should match the baud rate setting in E-Prime.

The same goes for the characters per second thing: also in E-Prime.

I doubt that the existence of a real PST SRB would affect anything. Do you have any extra switches connected to the back of the PST SRB?[/QUOTE]
No, there isn’t any switches. I only plug in the data cable and the power to the back of the PST SRB.

When I try on the response pad, I’ve tried unplgging both, and I’ve tried having them along with the response pad.

With the PST SRB plugged in, sometimes the 5 lights (LEDs?) on the PST SRB changes (switching on/off itself) when the experiment starts. This occurs both with or without the response pad, but I am not sure what it means.

I’m guessing that the flashing of the lights happens when E-Prime sends some commands to the PST SRB. It is probably doing the same for the RB-830 and I’m wondering aloud if this might be the reason. I suggest that you look for any commands within E-Prime that activate the lights and try disabling them.

I was able to resolve this issue by:

  1. Running the SRBoxDriverInstallation.exe file on the E-Prime 2.0 CD-ROM. It’s under the /E-Prime folder. This installs a driver called “PST Serial Response Box Driver” to Windows (I’m running Windows Vista).
  2. In Device Manager, Ports (COM & LPT) should have an entry of: “Cedrus RB-x30 Response Pad (COM#)”. If not, you may want to try to update the Cedrus driver from their website. Search for the rbx30_driver_uninstall.zip file.
  3. In Device Manager, under Universal Serial Bus controllers, there should be an entry of: “USB Serial Converter”. If not, update the driver using the *.inf files located within the rbx30_driver_uninstall.zip file (downloaded from the Cedrus website).

Basically, I did not do Step #1 and this screwed everything up. There is also an SRBoxTester.exe application which can confirm that everything is in working order. Google that.

Hope this helps (and saves you the 3 hours it took me)…

  • DGirard

Thank you. Your hard work and feedback is appreciated.