ANY-maze Help > I/O devices supported by ANY-maze > The ANY-maze Operant interfaces > Renumbering your ANY-maze Operant interfaces

Renumbering your ANY-maze Operant interfaces

Introduction

ANY-maze automatically gives cage numbers to all the ANY-maze Operant interfaces connected to your computer. These numbers are sequential, starting at 1. However, ANY-maze can't know the physical order of the cages on your bench, so it's likely that the numbers will be out of order.

Obviously, you could correct the order simply by moving the cages around, but there's a much simpler solution; you can renumber the interfaces from within the software.

How to perform the renumbering

When you have more than one ANY-maze Operant interface connected to your computer, ANY-maze will automatically include a Renumber Operant interfaces button in the ribbon bar on the I/O page. Selecting it will cause the Renumber Operant interfaces window to open, which is used to actually perform the renumbering.

Figure 1. The window used to renumber ANY-maze Operant interfaces.

To begin renumbering, click the Start... button in the window. This causes all the interfaces to have their numbers cleared, and they will all start to flash their LEDs. At this point, you simply have to press the Test control buttons on the interfaces (the same button as can be used to start a test) to number the interfaces. The first interface whose button you press will be given cage number 1, the second will be given cage number 2, and so on. As you press an interface's button, its LED will stop flashing.

Details

If you press the button on the top of an interface more than once, ANY-maze will ignore you.

If you make a mistake, for example you press the wrong interface's button, then you can just click the Restart... button in the Renumber ANY-maze Operant interfaces window. Doing this causes all the interfaces' numbers to be reset, and renumbering to begin again from 1.

When you finish renumbering the interfaces, the window will show a message telling you this and you can just click the Close button to shut the window. In fact, you can close the window at any time, but if you do this before all the interfaces have been given numbers, then ANY-maze will simply finish the numbering for you and, of course, it will probably not get the order right.

If, after you start the renumbering process, you plug in or unplug an interface, then the renumbering will be aborted and ANY-maze will automatically renumber the interfaces (including the newly plugged in interface) - of course, it will probably give them numbers that are not in order. However, a message will be displayed to tell you that this has occurred, and you can just click the Restart button to begin the renumbering process again.

In the unlikely event that you have a disabled ANY-maze Operant interface connected to your PC, then YOU should exclude it from the renumbering - that's to say you don't need to press its button; indeed doing so will have no effect. When you have pressed the buttons on all the enabled interfaces, the renumbering will end and ANY-maze will then automatically give any disabled interfaces the next numbers in sequence (so they will always have the highest numbers).

ANY-maze help topic T1115