Setting up your own eye tracking laboratory

Over the coming weeks/months, I’ll be posting some information and guides relating to setting up and using an eye tracker for psychology experiments.

I’ve decided to do this for a number of reasons. First, I’ve recently been involved in setting up a new eye tracking lab at the University of Southampton, so I want to write my own tips and tricks down before I forget. Second, I’ve realised that it will be useful to provide information on the basic uses of an eye tracker for new postgraduates/post-docs/anyone else in the School of Psychology to get acquainted with what they need to do in order to run decent eye tracking experiments. I figured that it may be of some use to other people if I put the information up online as I write it, so here it is. I’m planning on getting into some funky uses of programming later on in these guides, so that will probably have a bigger audience as well.

Before I get started, I should probably point out my qualifications in terms of knowing what I am talking about here. I’ve been lucky to have spent some time in the past few years learning the ins and outs of eye tracking from some fantastic colleagues who really know their stuff, so hopefully some or all of their expertise will be distilled into text form here. I fully accept that I may make errors in some aspects, and that the information provided will be rife with my own opinions and ideas. On top of all of that, I’m still learning, and will probably learn a fair bit by writing this all down and working out whether I really know what I think I know. That will be the fun part, at least for me.