Background
The Syncing Process
To sync two sources with each other, they need a simultaneously recorded signal with a characteristic signature at two timepoints in common. This could be the magnitude of the accelerometer for example, if multiple devices are shaken together.
Selecting common segments
The script can detect prominent shakes automatically with the
ShakeExtractor
. This is done by detecting the peaks above a certain
threshold
. These peaks are then merged into sequences of peaks that
are within distance
milliseconds of each other. Sequence candidates
need to fulfill the following conditions:
must have at least
min_length
peaksmust be contained in
start_window_length
orend_window_length
, respectively
The sequence with the highest weight, i.e., mean + median
of the peaks
in the sequence, is selected to represent the start- or end segment.
Calculation of the timeshift
To compensate offsets in the system time of different sources, the timeshift to synchronize the selected start segments with each other is calculated. For the automatic computation of the timeshift between two signals, the cross-correlation for each segment with the reference signal is calculated. The signals are shifted so that the correlation between the selected segments is maximized.
Adjusting the frequency
As no clock is perfect, an additional issue that arises when using multiple sensors is that of clocks with an offset in running speed. While clock speeds can drift over time, these influences are typically very small, and it can generally be assumed that the offset from the correct speed is constant for anything but long trials (Zhou, Hui, et al. “Frequency accuracy & stability dependencies of crystal oscillators.” Carleton University, Systems and Computer Engineering, Technical Report SCE-08-12 (2008)).
The result of these differences in running speed is that signals desynchronize over time. To compensate, a stretching factor is calculated, which brings the difference between the synchronization timeshifts for the start- and end segments to zero. After stretching the signal, the timeshift to remove the offset between signals is removed again, resulting in the final timeshift and stretch factor values.