ANY-maze Help > I/O devices supported by ANY-maze > Legacy I/O devices > The ANY-maze interface (AMi) > Installing and configuring AMi > Configuring AMi

Configuring AMi

To access the AMi configuration window, select your AMi device in the Input/output devices panel on the I/O page and then click the button to Configure this device in the ribbon bar.

Introduction

The AMi configuration window allows you to configure how different ports on an AMi device will operate. For example, a General Purpose I/O port can operate in 9 different modes.

The configuration window is also used to view version information for your device and to perform maintenance operations such as reprogramming AMi.

The configuration window pages

The configuration window is divided into six pages:

How AMi configuration is applied

It may seem quite obvious that as you alter the configuration of your AMi, the device actually updates to match the configuration settings you make. But what happens if you need to configure AMi in one way for one protocol, perhaps by making GPIO port 1 into an output, and another way for a different protocol, perhaps making GPIO port 1 into a photobeam input?

The answer is that there are different ways that the configuration is actually saved.

Configuring AMi with no experiment open

When you start ANY-maze, most of the main pages (Protocol, Experiment, Tests, etc.) are disabled, but the I/O and Monitor pages are not. Clearly, this means that you can configure AMi without opening an experiment.

In this case, if you configure AMi then the configuration is saved as the Default configuration for the device. Whenever the AMi device is connected to the computer, ANY-maze will automatically configure it using this configuration. In fact this is so intuitive you probably won't notice that it happens. For example, if you configure GPIO port 1 to be a switch input, then you close down your computer and go home, when you start the computer the next day GPIO port 1 will still be configured as a switch input.

But the default configuration has another important role - when you create a new experiment, this default configuration is automatically saved as part of the Protocol.

Configuring AMi with an experiment open

So, if you create an experiment, ANY-maze will start by noting the default configuration for your AMi as part of the protocol. But what if the default configuration isn't suitable for this protocol - for example, instead of GPIO port 1 being a switch input, you want it to be connected to a rotary encoder?

When an experiment is open, the changes you make to an AMi's configuration alter the configuration in the protocol and not the default configuration. In practical terms, what this means is that you can have different configurations for different protocols and you don't need to manually reconfigure AMi each time you change from one protocol (or experiment) to another.

A worked example

To make this a little clearer, here's a simple example. Let's imagine that you have an AMi high power output device (which can be used to turn on and off mains powered devices). This connects to the Digital I/O port of AMi and so you set your default configuration appropriately - i.e. the Digital I/O port is configured as 'Controls an AMi high power output device'.

Now you create a protocol for some Skinner boxes. When you open a new experiment to design your protocol, ANY-maze automatically loads the default configuration so you find that you have the 12 high power output switches of the AMi high power output device available. But you realise that the GPIO ports are all configured as 'Not used', so you change ports 1-8 to be 'switch inputs' and then use them to connect to the levers in the boxes. You then use the high power output device to control some shockers.

The next day you decide to create a protocol for your automated Y-maze system. Again, when you open a new experiment to design your protocol, ANY-maze automatically loads the default configuration and the high power switches are therefore available. But again, all the GPIO ports are set to 'Not used' (because that's how they're configured in the default protocol). So you change GPIO ports 1-6 to be photobeam inputs (you use beams to detect the animal's presence in the arms of the maze). You also use the high power output device to control some motors which open and close doors in the maze.

Now whenever you use your Skinner box protocol in an experiment, ANY-maze automatically configures GPIO ports 1-8 as switch inputs and the Digital I/O port as controlling your high power device. But when you use your Y-maze protocol, GPIO ports 1-6 are made into photobeam inputs, although the Digital I/O port is still set to control your high power device

As this example makes clear, by tying the configuration to the protocol, you don't need to reconfigure AMi each time you want to run a different experiment - and by also maintaining a default configuration, you don't have to always specify settings which will never change.

You may have spotted that in the above example, you would need to physically disconnect the levers from GPIO ports 1-6 and connect the photobeams as you switch between protocols (and therefore apparatus). In fact what you might choose to do is to connect the levers to ports 1-8 and the beams to ports 9-14 - that way you could leave everything connected all the time. (In this case, you'd probably want to specify ports 9-14 as 'Not used' in the Skinner box protocol, and ports 1-8 as 'Not used' in the Y-maze protocol).

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ANY-maze help topic T1152