Dear Raimondas Zemblys, thank you for your useful advice :)

Yes, the data analysis is a big concern. We are building a lab in the humanities, so except me, no other colleague is likely to devote their time on developing a platform for data analysis and I am not sure I myself is competent enough to make one comparable to Data Viewer. In other words, the budget needs to also cover a platform at least for manual marking AOI and data exporting. I will revise the question.

I am starting migrating to python myself and already migrated to R for the statistics. It is just that I am doing the budget for the lab, so I have to align with my colleagues for their needs. Maybe for them, I should put SPSS in the budget. Ah, but that is another story.

Dear Junru!

I have recently compiled a list of currently available eye trackers. Although not exhaustive it provides some overview on the market.

Regarding your question of sampling rate: 30Hz may suffice if you are really only interested in the distribution of fixations. Nevertheless this WILL prevent you from doing anything else, like saccade analysis. In addition, it might also be problematic, since it will affect the fast phases of nystagmus which will occur during free behavior.

In general, I would recommend to try to spend as much money as you can on the eye tracker, since this will improve your data quality and also the long-term usefulness of the apparatus. Better to save money on Matlab/SPSS licences, since, as Raymondas said, you can get free software which is able to the same calculations (although less comfortable).

Arrington has a mobile head-mounted eye tracker and they also provide their "analysis environment". Personally, I have not made the best experience with them (since we used a highly customized setup) but when you stick to the intended way-of-use, it might provide a good cost-value ratio for your needs.

Best whishes, David

I'm not certain whether you think this is a toy or not, but I consider these a step in the right direction (as in consumer hardware)

https://pupil-labs.com

Wearable and open-source, they can be rather easily be integrated in existing software. We have one of the first one in our settings and they offer sufficient results for usability testing. Sadly I'm not sure about AOI studies. Might be one of the cheapest solutions and since it's open-source you can potentially attach a higher frame-rate camera.

Do you know SMI eye tracker？www.smivision.com/en/gaze-and-eye-tracking-systems/home.html

www.smivision.com/en/gaze-and-eye-tracking-systems/home.html

If you want a low-cost solution check out the Gp3 gazepoint eye tracker http://www.gazept.com/product/gazepoint-gp3-eye-tracker/ It costs about $1500 with the analysis software. I have used it for eye tracking study in my PhD dissertation and it works quite well. Its parameters are simmilar to the Tobii and SMI solutions that were in the market around the year 2010.

Hi Junru,

Eye tracking devices has an interesting market, the prices are either about 5000 dollars or over 20000 dollars. There is no perfect cut point. For your price range, gazepoint may work well, i have used one, it seemed to have suited well for scene perception studies. But not well enough for reading i think. You can also contact imotions about some other preferences.

Good luck

Hi

You might have a look here:

http://www.smivision.com/en/gaze-and-eye-tracking-systems/applications/overview.html?gclid=CL_xrM7G-8oCFSQTwwodHSsNuA

SMI still might be above your budget. You could then contact Rigo Herold from the University of Applied sciences in Zwickau/Germany. He also builds small series of low-cost eyetrackers (in the range of 500 $):

https://www.fh-zwickau.de/index.php?id=11348

Best

Andreas

I made several calls to SMI de and SMI China. Their portable eye-tracking glasses on sold in China are far beyond this budget... The agency told me that the price is much higher than in Europe. I will try contacting the other brands.

You can contact professor Michael Carl in University of Renmin. He can help you.

According to their website (https://theeyetribe.com/), there is

EYE TRIBE TRACKER PRO

$199 PROFESSIONAL EYE TRACKING

but I have no idea how good or bad it is. In any case, I think there is no GUI or evaluation, experimentation software. On their website it says: it  "is intended only for software developers"