Opening two of the same widgets at once.

[TromBB]

I'm not able to open the same two widgets at the same time without launching another instance of the app.

It would be nice to be able to run two of the same widgets in the same instance of the app.

If there is a way of handling this that I didn't notice - please let me know.

[retiutut]

@TromBB What widget are you thinking of?

Initially, this sounds like it could cause many problems. It's important for there to be one source of truth for the data and settings.

[TromBB]

I think of, for example, the Band Power widget. I tried opening two band power widgets at a time and separate them by specific channels, but the software won't allow it. The only way I can do it is to open another instance of the app and select different channels there, which complicates the measurement process a lot, especially when you have other software running.

[retiutut]

This request likely can not be granted for all widgets, and doing it for some widgets is not good code or design.

[retiutut]

The GUI is not meant to be a comprehensive solution for all users, but more as a starting point and source of truth of how to visualize data from OpenBCI boards.

@TromBB The best solution for you is likely to use the Networking Widget to send out the BandPower data for all channels, receive this data with a Python sketch, and make multiple custom plots.

[retiutut]

Another more important issue is to make data types for the Networking widget available even when widgets are NOT open. Currently, some widgets, like BandPower and EMG, need to be open in order for the data to be processed in such a way that it's not 0's.

[TromBB]

Thanks for the replies. The point of my request was to communicate my issue and to see if there was any pathway I was missing. I'm not really a developer, just was trying to see how can I make this work in a lab :) I'll see what I can do with my team.

[retiutut]

@TromBB I'll leave this issue open for a little while so that myself and others can think about it. The GUI purposefully only has one instance of each widget so that the data doesn't get confusing on the back-end.

You also have two other widgets which can help you visualize FFT data: FFT widget and Spectrogram Widget.

The Spectrogram Widget actually does have two plots 😄 . Give that a try, and then you can see changes over time.

[retiutut]

@TromBB It's possible to make the BandPower widget have a mode to be a "Dual BandPower Widget" with side-by-side bars for each BandPower. This would make visual comparison more feasible. 😃

It would have two channel selectors like the Spectrogram widget has.