Is the low-cost EyeTribe eye tracker any good for research?

Abstract

Eye-tracking technology is becoming increasingly cheaper, both on the hardware and on the software front. Currently, the EyeTribe tracker is the most inexpensive commercial eye tracker in the world, at a price of $99. The low costs make it a potentially interesting resource for research, but no objective testing of its quality has been performed yet. Here the EyeTribe tracker is compared with an EyeLink 1000, a high-quality video eye tracker. Results indicate that the spatial precision and accuracy are good enough for fixation checking, point-of-regard analyses, and pupilometry. However, the low sampling rate renders the device unsuitable for testing high-accuracy saccade metrics. Additionally, open-source toolboxes for Matlab and Python, and a plug-in for OpenSesame are presented, which can be used to interface with the EyeTribe tracker.