ANY-maze Help > I/O devices supported by ANY-maze > The ANY-maze interface device family > The ANY-maze Audio interface > Using the ANY-maze Audio interface in tests

Using the ANY-maze Audio interface in tests

Introduction

After connecting and testing your ANY-maze Audio interface you'll be ready to actually use it in some tests.

Adding speakers to the protocol

To use an ANY-maze Audio interface in tests, you will need to add a speaker to your protocol and then select the port on the interface that the speaker is connected to as the speaker's port to use.

When you set up the speaker in the protocol you will be able to choose what the speaker should play, at what volume and for how long. You'll also be able to specify whether the speaker should start playing when the test starts and whether the speaker should be reset (i.e. stop playing) at the end of the test - see figure 1, below.

Figure 1. The options available when setting up a speaker in the protocol.

The various options are described in detail here.

Choosing when to activate a speaker

As mentioned above, when setting up an speaker in your protocol you will be able to specify whether the speaker should start playing at the start of the test; but what if you want to wait until some condition is met (perhaps when the animal enters a certain zone, or after the test has been running for a certain period) before the speaker starts to play? The answer is to use a procedure to detect when the condition occurs and then switch on the speaker - as in the example below.

Figure 2. Example of a simple procedure which will switch on the speaker whenever the animal enters the 'left' zone. (Note: if this is the same speaker as is shown in figure 1, then it will automatically switch off after 1s.)

Full details about how to set up a procedure can be found here.

Changing what the speaker is playing during a test

In fact, procedures allow you to do much more than simply switch a speaker on and off during a test, you can also change other aspects of what's playing, for example altering the pitch of a tone, changing the volume or switching to a different sound file. A full list of all the speaker actions can be found here.

See also:

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ANY-maze help topic T1093