Please explain the ini settings file. Thank you! |
This documentation was last updated August 2014. If something misbehaves or is incorrect please comment on this answer, or email us at Below are the defaults found in
IntroductionThe options are generally sorted alphabetically. In the Edit INI File menu option, there is a jump list that can speed up navigation of these settings. The
[General]The settings here didn't seem to fit specifically in any other setting, or they were overlapped with multiple sections.
This setting gets modified by the Enter Click button if it is on a toolbar and is used. The XML button id for it is:
This setting gets modified by the Spacebar Click button if it is on a toolbar and is used. The XML button id for it is:
This instructs CaptainHook to utiliize the CustomExtraInfo parameter in the INPUT struct. This makes hooking the mouse and keyboard more seamless, but recent Windows updates disabled using this parameter on touch screen computers. Please see: http://answers.eyetechds.com/questions/128/mouse-stutter-jumpy-bad-clicking-laggy for information about which Windows updates affected this feature.
This limits the boundary where the mouse can be moved with eye tracking. This can be used to limit eye tracking to a sub-section of the screen, or a subsection of the visible area. It is in percentages of the width and height of the screen, top-left-corner-x, top-left-corner-y, width, height. The parameters are space separated. So limiting gaze processing to only looking at the screen would be The default Gaze-boundary setting is set to have a 10% border around the screen.
This setting hides the cursor when the exe name has focus. The syntax for specifying programs is
This setting is modified by the GUI setting This sets how long the eye tracker is stalled or temporarily paused after any key on the keyboard is pressed or released. The same stall timer for the eye tracker can be restarted by a mouse move, a mouse click, or a key press. The most recent of the three sets the stall timer.
When specified this supersedes the detected local setting of the computer and will use the one listed here. The locale is specified with two letter abbreviations. Supported locales include: When not specified, QuickACCESS detects the language based on the
This setting is modified by the GUI setting This sets how long the eye tracker is stalled or temporarily paused after the hardware mouse is clicked. The same stall timer for the eye tracker can be restarted by a mouse move, a mouse click, or a key press. The most recent action of the three sets the stall timer.
This setting is modified by the GUI setting This sets how long the eye tracker is stalled or temporarily paused after the hardware mouse is moved. The same stall timer for the eye tracker can be restarted by a mouse move, a mouse click, or a key press. The most recent action of the three sets the stall timer.
This detects a few different command line options that QuickACCESS can be ran with. QuickACCESS checks these values in a few places. Here in the current User's ini file, in the system wide ini file, and actual command line arguments that QA.exe is ran with.
*If
This setting stores the current screen used by QuickACCESS. This lets the user select which monitor to use with the eye tracker and with the toolbar. The asterisk, "*", indicates the "Primary" or "Main" screen as set in Windows.
This setting forces the mouse to move on-screen by a number of pixels before performing a click. The main purpose of this setting is to aid users that look at the edge of the screen and click intending to hit an icon or a scroll bar. Window's frames and decorations change across machines and screen resolutions, and being able to specify this setting is very useful for some users. The default is that it is turned off:
This stall time gets triggered by Spacebar Clicking or Enter clicking. It is different from the keyboard stall time. So when the key is pressed and released, eye tracking is stalled by the number of seconds specified, e. g.
When the keyboard is in use, not for clicking, this is the delay between the last key pressed and before clicking is available by the
This enables the detection and hooking of the touch screen and digitizer events that arrive as RawInput in Windows. This kind of hooking is very robust for handling the touch screen, but it doesn't stop the eye tracker and process the first screen tap at the same time. It requires that the first tap to disable the eye tracker and a second tap to do a regular mouse click. The alternative to using this touch screen hook is to make sure http://answers.eyetechds.com/questions/240/touchscreen-two-taps
When a touch screen is present on the computer, and it is touched or used, after the first touch, QuickACCESS disables eye tracking and touches after that are easily used and detected for clicking. The default is a 5 second timeout.
These two settings specify the minimum number of pixels the hardware mouse must be moved to cause an eye tracker stall. The move is across a single frame of movement, so > 100 pixels will typically disable the hardware mouse completely. This is useful if the end user uses a hardware mouse for clicking occasionally, but bumps the mouse while doing so. The amount of a typical bump can be entered here, so eye tracking won't be stalled accidentally. [AEye]The first two settings supersede the settings in the Eye Tracking section below. This setting is only accessed for TM5, VT3 or other cameras that are using the AEye eye tracking on a chip component.
The AEye trackers typically ship out with a 12 mm lens.
This is the default algorithm in use by the AEye as of August 2014. As other algorithms are developed this setting may change.
This changes whether the calibration looks animated or not. For early versions of the AEye, an animated calibration would cause issues. This is no longer the case for all production versions of the AEye. [Blink]These settings deal with
This is the amount of time in seconds that if the eyes are closed, it will be ignored as an eye gesture/event.
This is the amount of time in seconds that if the eyes are closed, it will be interpreted as an eye gesture/event, typically a Double Click with the mouse when
This is the amount of time in seconds that if the eyes are closed, it will be interpreted as an eye gesture/event, typically a Single Left Click with the mouse when
This enables sounds to know the timing of a blink when your eyes are closed. Three tones are played, a middle tone to indicate a Normal Blink click, a high tone to indicate a Long Blink click and a low town to indicate a Canceled Blink click. The associated files are found in the sounds folder: blinkCancel.wav, blinkLong.wav, blinkNormal.wav.
This setting changes whether both eyes are required to perform a click. This is useful for some individuals that are unable to close both eyes.
This setting associates blink clicking to perform a left click.
This setting associates a long blink click to perform a double left click.
This is the minimum number of frames per second that the camera needs to be running at in order for blink clicks to be valid. Other setups when this setting is low frequently, this blink processing may be unreliable and have more false positives.
This is the minimum percentage of frames that the computer needs to be processing from the camera in order for blink clicks to be valid. Other setups when this setting is low frequently, this blink processing may be unreliable and have more false positives. When the CPU is maxed out or the RAM is maxed out on a computer often, then blink clicking may be disabled temporarily by this setting until the computer is able to process frames again. [Calibration]These settings pertain to the calibration aspect of QuickACCESS. Use the calibration extras dialog to change most of these settings.
This is the background color of the calibration screen. It can receive colors, like standard CSS color values, and hex specified colors.
This is the png file used during the calibration. It is centered and resized down to fit in a 256x256 box.
This is the calibrated distance so that the stats widget in QuickACCESS reports distances relative to this measurement. This does not affect the algorithm's tracking ability.
This is the time in seconds in between calibrating on a target. The target animates traveling across a portion of the screen during this time. Use the calibration extras dialog to change this setting.
This sets whether or not a score should be shown after a calibration is completed. In this view of the score, the red lines represent measurements off the right eye and the blue lines off the left eye. The shorter the lines the better. Typically long lines indicate that a poor measurement was taken on a specific location of the screen. Sometimes it is indicative of a bad setup, or of the user not looking at the target. Other times it is caused by measurements taken from the wrong part of the image near the eye
This controls whether or not the calibration is automatic or requires the spacebar to be pressed in order to advance.
This is the amount of time in seconds spent calibrating each target. The default of
This is the default number of calibration points used. For some users, they may find just as high of accuracy with 9 or 5 point calibrations.
This is the time in seconds that is used during the calibration update process (the single update point in the center of the screen).
This is whether or not sounds should be played on success of a calibration point.
This is whether the image should spin while shrinking during the calibration process. [EyeTracker]These settings are directly from the QuickLINK 2 API. Please see its documentation for detailed explanations. Below are brief summaries of the same info. The word
The bandwidth mode the device will use. The available options are
The percentage of the bus bandwidth used by the device when searching for eyes. When
The percentage of the bus bandwidth used by the device when at least one eye has been found and is being tracked. The typical values are between 0 and 100.
The number of pixels to combine in the x and y direction.
The flag for enabling/disabling calibration.
The approximate distance in centimeters from the user to the device.
The exposure time in milliseconds for each frame. Possible values range from 1-50 ms.
Whether or not to flip the image on the X or Y axis.
The gain mode the device will use.
The gain value the device will use.
The filter mode for the output gaze point. Standard modes selectable from the GUI are:
The Smart stability provides very quick responsive use of the eye tracker. The Classic stability can provide more smoothing than the Smart stability, but is less responsive. Default values used with each are stored in the
The value used for the filtering mode.
This is the image processing algorithm used on eye trackers that don't have eye tracking on a chip.
The flag for enabling/disabling image processing.
The calculated radii of the cornea of the eyes in centimeters. These radii will affect the calculated distance value that is output for each frame.
What eyes should be tracked and calibrated. For the default, both eyes are required on each target of the calibration.
The flag for enabling/disabling final gaze point interpolation.
The focal length in centimeters of the lens.
The horizontal distance in percentage of the image width that either eye can be from the left or right edge of the region of interest before the region of interest will move and try to re-center the eyes.
The dimensions of the region of interest in percentage of the sensor size when the eyes are being tracked.
The maximum refresh rate of the camera when viewed through QuickACCESS's Live View window.
These modes control what is shown on each indicator light next to the camera lens.
- [Eye_Dwell]These settings are specific to when the eye clicking is in
This is whether or not the dwell click should be animated.
This is whether or not a sound should be played when a click is performed.
This is whether or not dwell clicking is enabled.
This is the time in seconds required to stare at a small region of the screen to perform a dwell click.
This is the dimensions of the region required to perform a dwell click, or in other words, if the path of the gaze points travels a region larger than this across the dwell time, then a dwell click won't be performed.
At what point into an eye dwell should the movement of the cursor get locked during a dwell. This is a percentage of the eye dwell time.
This is a comma separated list of processes that perform their own click and dwell processing, and should not have dwell clicks performed on them.
This is the time in seconds before the dwell action is considered idle and the cursor will be moved to a "parking space". Requires
An x, y location measured from the top left corner of the screen, measured as a percentage of the screen's dimensions. The default value @Point(0 100) represents the bottom left corner of the screen. Requires
This is whether or not the parking of the mouse should be performed. [HotKeys]The hotkeys interface allows for any other program that can send key strokes, to be able to command different parts of QuickACCESS or to leverage some of QuickACCESS's integration with the mouse/keyboard/eyetracker. The format is:
or <modifer>+<key> or <key> Such as: But you need to restart QuickACCESS for it to find those new hotkeys. The hotkeys are unique to each profile unless you edit the system wide hotkey list located here:
Then newly created profiles will get its initial list of hotkeys from there.
This hotkey starts a calibration.
This hotkey runs the calibration update.
This hotkey toggles the settings menu.
This hotkey toggles the Live View.
This hotkey toggles eye tracking, just like the Play/Pause button.
This hotkey launches the help documentation in a web browser.
This hotkey exits QuickACCESS.
These hotkeys performs a short scroll to the direction indicated. The setting associated with the lines are found under
This disables all available actions in QuickACCESS, except the hotkey interface. See
This toggles scrolling simultaneously in the x and y directions.
This toggles scrolling in the x direction, a standard scrolling direction in the windows metro view.
This toggles visibility of the cursor in almost all of windows.
This minimizes or shows the on-screen keyboard.
This starts scrolling the mouse at the current gaze location, or in other words, it both sets the scrolling target and starts scrolling in the same action.
This toggles scrolling in the y direction, the standard scrolling direction on a windows desktop.
This toggles between sleeping and waking QuickACCESS. Or in other words, whether QuickACCESS is active and functional or not. See
This triggers the zoom action at the current gaze location.
This wakes up QuickACCESS when it has been "asleep", or disabled. See [Hub]These settings apply to the core window manager of QuickACCESS. auto_hide_time_on_relaunch=10 If a second launch of QuickACCESS is attempted, how long the blue toolbar should remain out in seconds. check_camera_memory_distance=true This enables the dialog that says
When you say no to this dialog it won't show again.
This sets whether or not QuickACCESS should be show the OverView slides every time it is relaunched or not.
This sets if a double click should be played. // ?
This sets how long the eyes are not allowed to perform clicks after the eye tracker is started.
These three settings are unsupported.
This is a toggle for showing a few additional settings in the GUI. This can be toggled by a button on the about page labeled
This is whether or not to show the Live View when QuickACCESS is started.
This sets to show the overview when QuickACCESS is launched to explain the layout and orientation to new users.
This sets whether or not the system tray menu should be popped-up when QuickACCESS is launched a second time.
This sets whether or not the "Did you know?" slides should be shown on startup.
This is no longer supported.
This is no longer supported.
This is whether or not the mouse movement arriving to QuickACCESS through the hooking dll, should be throttled or not.
This sets the last index of the tips slide show that should be shown the next time it is visible.
This sets the size in pixels of the small circles that are displayed when a click is performed. [LiveView]
This sets the kind of cross hairs that are drawn on top of the eye.
This sets whether or not the stats button is visible in the live view.
This sets if the tips to the right of the live view are current visible or not.
This sets the current slide of the tips view. [Overview]
This sets what extra button is shown on the right side of each of the overview slide show. [Passwords]
This is where a password is stored for the camera(s) that have been used on this computer. These passwords are only required on TM2, QG3, TM3, TM4 and VT1 eye trackers. [Profiles]
This is the profile that is currently in use. All the data specific to this profile is store under: This value is changed by using the profiles sub menu under the System Tray Icon menu. [Scrolling]These settings are all associated with the scrolling modes in QuickACCESS
This sets whether an acceleration factor should be added in to enable ultra high speed scrolling.
This sets if the scrolling will start immediately upon pressing the toggle, or if a two stage click to scroll is required.
This is the percentage of the screen/window used to scroll.
While scrolling was in beta, it was disabled by default until someone wanted to try it.
This is a multiplier that is applied to the expressions below to get the final scroll speed.
These settings set how the scrolling behavior is mapped to scrolling velocity in the
While any scroll mode is on, a fake, hollow cursor is drawn at the gaze location. The real cursor resides at the last
Sets the Windows registry value for horizontal scrolling characters.
Sets the Windows registry value for horizontal scrolling characters.
This sets whether or not the fake cursor and the indication arrows should be drawn while scrolling. [Stability]
These settings are the last values associated with those used in [Toolbar]These settings apply to the behavior and appearance of the toolbars in QuickACCESS.
This is the offset that the activation area begins off the screen. Negative values indicate that it overlaps onto the screen. This is measured in pixels.
This is how long the toolbar stays out after the cursor or gaze is no longer hovering it.
This is the background color of the toolbars.
This is not supported.
This is whether or not the toolbar should hide when it is clicked on.
This sets the drawn hotspot onto the screen.
This is unsupported.
This marks if the hotspot should stay on the screen or not. Autohiding is disabled when locked is true. This is normally triggered by the Lock Toolbar button.
This is how opaque the background of the toolbars are.
This is if the hotspot should be drawn rounded or if it should be drawn as a rectangle. Either way, they are triggered by the same rectangle on the edge of the screen.
This is the xml file loaded that draws all the buttons and toolbars. This is typically modified from the [VT2]These settings are specific to the camera inside the TM4 Mini, VT2, VT2 Mini, EyeOn, and EyeOn Mini eye trackers. These settings supersede the EyeTracker settings above.
See descriptions above in the EyeTracker section for these same values. Note the different default values. These settings were enabled in August 2014, and has not been available for a several versions.
Basically if this value reads |