Managing visualizers

[theparkerlab]

Hi, first off thanks for all of the amazing tools that you all have built with Bonsai! We are using it as the main system for data acquisition in my lab, and overall it has been working great. The one thing that my lab members struggle with regularly is managing visualizers. There are two main issues that pop up the most. First, if you have any sort of grouping (SelectMany, GroupWorkflow, etc.) then if you close the window for that group, any visualizers enabled from nodes within the group disappear. In order to get them back you have to open the grouped workflow again and re-enable the visualizers. Is there any ways to "permanently" enable visualizers so that you can close the grouped workflows and keep the visualizers open? Second, is there anyway to dock the visualizers so that they're not free floating? It's easy for things to get mixed up and lost when you have 10+ visualizers open, and having them all together in one window would make things easier.

Thanks!
Phil

[bruno-f-cruz]

Hey,

Try the TableLayoutPanel. There will be documentation on this at some point, but basically, you can assemble your own visualizer by using a visualizermapping and selecting the proper visualizer type. Then map these onto the table layout.

Workflow (Copy+Paste me)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<WorkflowBuilder Version="2.8.1"
                 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
                 xmlns:dsp="clr-namespace:Bonsai.Dsp;assembly=Bonsai.Dsp"
                 xmlns:p1="clr-namespace:Bonsai.Dsp.Design;assembly=Bonsai.Dsp.Design"
                 xmlns:rx="clr-namespace:Bonsai.Reactive;assembly=Bonsai.Core"
                 xmlns:p2="clr-namespace:Bonsai.Design;assembly=Bonsai.Design"
                 xmlns:cv="clr-namespace:Bonsai.Vision;assembly=Bonsai.Vision"
                 xmlns:p3="clr-namespace:Bonsai.Vision.Design;assembly=Bonsai.Vision.Design"
                 xmlns:viz="clr-namespace:Bonsai.Design.Visualizers;assembly=Bonsai.Design.Visualizers"
                 xmlns="https://bonsai-rx.org/2018/workflow">
  <Workflow>
    <Nodes>
      <Expression xsi:type="Combinator">
        <Combinator xsi:type="dsp:FunctionGenerator">
          <dsp:BufferLength>441</dsp:BufferLength>
          <dsp:Frequency>150</dsp:Frequency>
          <dsp:Waveform>Sine</dsp:Waveform>
          <dsp:SampleRate>44100</dsp:SampleRate>
          <dsp:Amplitude>1</dsp:Amplitude>
          <dsp:Offset>0</dsp:Offset>
          <dsp:Phase>0</dsp:Phase>
        </Combinator>
      </Expression>
      <Expression xsi:type="VisualizerMapping">
        <VisualizerType xsi:type="TypeMapping" TypeArguments="p1:MatVisualizer" />
      </Expression>
      <Expression xsi:type="Combinator">
        <Combinator xsi:type="rx:Range">
          <rx:Start>0</rx:Start>
          <rx:Count>10</rx:Count>
        </Combinator>
      </Expression>
      <Expression xsi:type="VisualizerMapping">
        <VisualizerType xsi:type="TypeMapping" TypeArguments="p2:ObjectTextVisualizer" />
      </Expression>
      <Expression xsi:type="Combinator">
        <Combinator xsi:type="cv:CameraCapture">
          <cv:Index>0</cv:Index>
          <cv:CaptureProperties />
        </Combinator>
      </Expression>
      <Expression xsi:type="Combinator">
        <Combinator xsi:type="cv:Smooth">
          <cv:SmoothType>Gaussian</cv:SmoothType>
          <cv:Size1>51</cv:Size1>
          <cv:Size2>51</cv:Size2>
          <cv:Sigma1>111</cv:Sigma1>
          <cv:Sigma2>111</cv:Sigma2>
        </Combinator>
      </Expression>
      <Expression xsi:type="VisualizerMapping">
        <VisualizerType xsi:type="TypeMapping" TypeArguments="p3:IplImageVisualizer" />
      </Expression>
      <Expression xsi:type="viz:TableLayoutPanelBuilder">
        <viz:ColumnCount>2</viz:ColumnCount>
        <viz:RowCount>2</viz:RowCount>
        <viz:ColumnStyles />
        <viz:RowStyles />
        <viz:CellSpans>
          <viz:CellSpan ColumnSpan="1" RowSpan="1" />
          <viz:CellSpan ColumnSpan="1" RowSpan="1" />
          <viz:CellSpan ColumnSpan="2" RowSpan="1" />
        </viz:CellSpans>
      </Expression>
    </Nodes>
    <Edges>
      <Edge From="0" To="1" Label="Source1" />
      <Edge From="1" To="7" Label="Source1" />
      <Edge From="2" To="3" Label="Source1" />
      <Edge From="3" To="7" Label="Source2" />
      <Edge From="4" To="5" Label="Source1" />
      <Edge From="5" To="6" Label="Source1" />
      <Edge From="6" To="7" Label="Source3" />
    </Edges>
  </Workflow>
</WorkflowBuilder>

[theparkerlab]

This is super helpful, thanks Bruno!

[ncguilbeault]

Hi there, I just wanted to add to Bruno's response to share a few more things you can do with VisualizerMapping and TableLayoutPanel:

With VisualizerMapping, you can explicitly define mashups inside of your workflow by feeding the visualizers you want to overlay onto the main visualizer through VisualizerMapping. Mashups used to be created implicitly, where you would drag and drop certain visualizers onto eachother to create an overlay of different features. This is a much cleaner way of defining mashups, which is more in line with Bonsai's design and deals with some of the previous pain points of implicitly defined mashups. Here is an example:

Another thing is that these are stackable. You can pass one TableLayoutPanel into another TableLayoutPanel through VisualizerMapping to create unique and custom layouts. Example:

The last point I wanted to share is not really a feature, but more a point on organization. You can group your visualizer workflow into a GroupWorkflow and the visualizer of the node connected to the WorkflowOutput will become the group visualizer. Example:

There should be more documentation of these features coming out in the future, but hopefully this helps in the meantime!

[bruno-f-cruz]

I would just add that you can select the visualizer you want for a specific type by right-clicking the mapping node.

[theparkerlab]

Thank you both, this is exactly what I was hoping for and a serious game changer! -Phil