The communications task (communications)

You should read how to write correctly a scenario file first.

Presentation of the communications plugin.

In the communication task, participants have to pay attention to audio instructions about the frequencies of four radios. The participants regularly receive messages; these may (or may not) be addressed to them. These communications always give precise instructions about the frequency settings of the radios to be monitored.

Basic operations

Basically, once the communications plugin is started, the participant is auditory prompted via the radioprompt parameter, which accepts two values : own or other.

An own prompt will generate and display a relevant auditory prompt, i.e., the participant must react to it. If so, the prompt will mention the callsign of the participant, which is automatically generated at plugin startup, based on the callsignregex parameter ([A-Z][A-Z][A-Z]\d\d\d by default). An other prompt will mention an irrelevant callsign, so the auditory instruction should not be taken into account by the participant.

If you want to force a particular value for the various callsigns (own or other), you can set it manually via the owncallsign and othercallsign parameters. Be careful that the othercallsign parameter contain the correct number of callsigns, as defined by othercallsignnumber.

When prompted, the participant must switch to and tune the correct radio, using left, right, up & down arrow keys. Once done, he or she must hit the Return key to confirm the response. The delay left to react can be tuned via the maxresponsedelay (ms) parameter.

When relevant (response or timeout), a feedback can be displayed if needed (see the feedback parameters in the table below).

Automatic solving

To enable/disable a task automation, just use the automaticsolver parameter, like in the following:

0:00:00;communications;
0:00:00;communications;automaticsolver;True      # The communications is automated as soon as it is started
0:00:30;communications;automaticsolver;False     # Track automation is disabled in the middle of the scenario
0:01:00;communications;stop

When enabled, the automation will react to own auditory prompt by selecting, tuning and confirming its response (emulate a Return press).

List of communications parameters

Variable	Description	Possible values	Default
title	Title of the task, displayed if the plugin is visible	(string)	Communications
taskplacement	Task location in a 3x2 canvas	topleft, topmid, topright, bottomleft, bottommid, bottomright, fullscreen	bottomleft
taskupdatetime	Delay between plugin updates (ms)	(positive integer)	80
automaticsolver	When True, the target frequency is automatically set by an automation	(boolean)	False
displayautomationstate	If True, the current automation state (MANUAL vs AUTO ON) of the task is displayed.	(boolean)	True
callsignregex	Regular expression pattern for callsign generation	(regular expression)	[A-Z][A-Z][A-Z]\d\d\d
owncallsign	Callsign of the subject. If empty, automatically generated according to callsignregex	(string)	(empty)
othercallsignnumber	Number of irrelevant distracting callsigns	(positive integer)	5
othercallsign	List of distracting callsigns. If empty, automatically generated according to callsignregex and othercallsignnumber	(list of string)	(empty)
airbandminMhz	Minimum radio frequency, in Mhz	(positive float)	108.0
airbandmaxMhz	Maximum radio frequency, in Mhz	(positive float)	137.0
airbandminvariationMhz	Minimum frequency variation of the target radio	(positive integer)	5
airbandmaxvariationMhz	Maximum frequency variation of the target radio	(positive integer)	6
voiceidiom	Voice idiom. The corresponding folder must be present in the Sound directory	english or french	french
voicegender	Voice gender. The corresponding folder must be present in the selected idiom directory	male or female	female
radioprompt	Use it to trigger either a target (own) or a distractor (other) prompt [own or other]. Initially empty. Will be emptied at the end of the prompt	own or other	(empty)
promptlist	List of radio labels, in their order of appearance. Each corresponding file must be available in the sound folder. This list is used both for target and distractors radio lists.	(list of string)	[NAV1, NAV2, COM1, COM2]
maxresponsedelay	Maximum response delay (ms)	(positive integer)	20000
feedbackduration	Duration (ms) of the feedbacks when enabled	(positive integer)	1500
feedbacks-positive-active	Is the positive feedback (correct response) enabled?	(boolean)	False
feedbacks-positive-color	Color of the positive feedback if enabled	white, black, green, red, background, lightgrey, grey, blue	green
feedbacks-negative-active	Is the negative feedback (correct response) enabled?	(boolean)	False
feedbacks-negative-color	Color of the negative feedback if enabled	white, black, green, red, background, lightgrey, grey, blue	red