psychopy event based on mouse position

Question

I am setting up a Fitts' law experiment where I would like a participant to click on a start button, move the mouse in a straight line, and then click on a target. After clicking start, if the participant moves their mouse too far up or down in the vertical direction I would like to display a white screen for 30 seconds and accept no input, afterward moving to the next trial.

Currently, no matter what, the experiment is behaving as if I'm moving outside the acceptable range and always executes the if statement.

Here is the code for it that I have right now:

from psychopy import core

start = mouse.isPressedIn(polygon, buttons=[0])


if start==True:
    thisExp.addData('starttime',core.getTime())
    x, y = mouse.getPos()
    mouse.x.append(x)
    mouse.y.append(y) 
    if y>10 or y<-10:         #this is the statement that isn't resulting in what I would expect
thisExp.addData('penalty',1)

finish = mouse.isPressedIn(polygon2, buttons=[0])

if finish==True:
    thisExp.addData('stoptime',core.getTime())
    continueRoutine=False

I haven't figured out everything I need under the nested if statement yet. Right now I am just trying to make sure it works correctly. It never evaluates the if statement as true and never adds the penalty, even though looking at the collected mouse.y list data in the csv file I can see that there were instances where y was outside of whatever range I set.

It appears that mouse position data is being collected as soon as the trial begins, not just after polygon is clicked. However, starttime and stoptime do appear to be based on when polygon and polygon2 are clicked. I'm really not sure what is going on.

UPDATE: I didn't get notified about Jonas' response until a day later for some reason. I wish I had because it would have put me on the right track a few hours earlier. It's a builder code component.

My code was all running each frame. At the beginning of the routine I added:

checkstart = False

That with the following code each frame solves this particular problem:

start = mouse.isPressedIn(polygon, buttons=[0])

if start==True:
    thisExp.addData('starttime',core.getTime())
    x, y = mouse.getPos()
    mouse.x.append(x)
    mouse.y.append(y)
    checkstart=True;

if checkstart==True:
    if y>10 or y <-10:
        thisExp.addData('penalty',1)


finish = mouse.isPressedIn(polygon2, buttons=[0])

if finish==True:
    thisExp.addData('stoptime',core.getTime())
    continueRoutine=False

I still don't know why mouse position is collected before polygon is clicked but it doesn't actually matter to me. I can match the data for the frame where the mouse was clicked to the position that corresponds to the start button to get the beginning of the mouse path trace.

Answer 1

My code was all running each frame. At the beginning of the routine I added:

checkstart = False

That with the following code each frame solves this particular problem:

start = mouse.isPressedIn(polygon, buttons=[0])

if start==True:
    thisExp.addData('starttime',core.getTime())
    x, y = mouse.getPos()
    mouse.x.append(x)
    mouse.y.append(y)
    checkstart=True;

if checkstart==True:
    if y>10 or y <-10:
        thisExp.addData('penalty',1)


finish = mouse.isPressedIn(polygon2, buttons=[0])

if finish==True:
    thisExp.addData('stoptime',core.getTime())
    continueRoutine=False

I still don't know why mouse position is collected before polygon is clicked but it doesn't actually matter to me. I can match the data for the frame where the mouse was clicked to the position that corresponds to the start button to get the beginning of the mouse path trace.