Deal with different streams across blocks in Open Ephys

[alejoe91]

Hi guys,

We have some user that modify the active probes across experiments. While this is totally fine in Open Ephys (you get different settings file), this is not supported in NEo. https://github.com/NeuralEnsemble/python-neo/blob/master/neo/rawio/openephysbinaryrawio.py#L1127-L1142

Is there a reason why we can't have different streams across blocks?

@samuelgarcia @h-mayorquin @zm711

[h-mayorquin]

I am not familiar with the block data model so I think @samuelgarcia is the best person to describe it or point us to the documentation but as a workaround meanwhile.

As a temporal workaround can they poin the reader to some specific sub-folder of the structure?

https://github.com/NeuralEnsemble/python-neo/blob/a376b4a74e1ee186a75fb4d357052ed4518c846d/neo/rawio/openephysbinaryrawio.py#L53-L81

[alejoe91]

That could work!

[samuelgarcia]

Is there a reason why we can't have different streams across blocks?

It is by design, stream must be across blocks and segments.

Eventualy, you can create stream that are silent during some segment/block. But you will loose the buffer abtraction.