A recorder for vectors and/or discrete events.
The vector input is read every sampleInterval ms. Discrete events are recorded when they arrive.
Vectors can be displayed as a series of lines - one line for each element of the input as a function of time, or as a greyscale plot in the display object.
Spikes, if collected are shown as vertical bars where the y coordinate indicates the channel on which the spike arrived.
The recordFromStart option, which defaults to true, can be set to false to switch the recorder off. This may improve performance in long calculations, and can also be used in conjunction with the two ports on the top of the device. If the recorder is off and a spike arrives on the port labelled "start recording" then it is switched to on. If it is on and a spike arrives on the "stop recording" port then it is switched off. Other combinations have no effect. One way this can be used to pick out intervals in a signal is to pipe the output of an event sequence generator through a spike splitter and connect the first channel to the "on" port and the second to the "off" port. Then, whne the sequence contains a spike of index 0 the recorder will be started, and when it has a spike of index 1, the recorder will stop. Another potential use is in triggered recording, where some other circuitry generates the "on" signal to start the recording. For fixed interval recordings, the on signal can also be routed through a spike delay unit to provide the "off" signal.
Note that occasionally greyscale plots look very dull. This is typically because the range of the selected color table in the display does not match the range of the input data. There are usually default color tables provided for data defined on [0,1] and for membrane potentials measured in mV, but others can easily be constructed.