ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The I/O page > The ANY-maze Watchdog

The ANY-maze Watchdog

Introduction

The ANY-maze watchdog is a utility feature which can be used to monitor light, temperature and humidity sensors and alert you if they go outside a predetermined range.

The watchdog operates independently of any experiments and can monitor any sensors at any time, even if the sensors are simultaneously being used in an experiment.

Scenarios in which you might want to use the watchdog include such things as: Send an SMS message to my cell phone when the water in my water-maze reaches 34°C or Send me a message if the light level in my room goes below 50 lux at any time between 7am and 7pm.

The main watchdog window

If you have any light, temperature or humidity sensors connected to your computer, the ribbon bar on the I/O page will include a Watchdog section containing Switch on watchdog and Watchdog set-up buttons. Clicking the Watchdog set-up button opens the main Watchdog window, shown in figure 1, below.

Note that clicking the Switch on watchdog button, will switch the watchdog on and off. When off the watchdog won't monitor any sensors; when on it will monitor those sensors specified in the active watchdog activities.

Figure 1. The main watchdog window, from which you can create new activities for the watchdog to monitor and control existing activities.

Adding a watchdog activity

To add a new watchdog activity you should simply click the New... button in the Watchdog window. This will cause the Set up watchdog activity window to open, where you will be able to specify the sensor to monitor, the limits to use, and the method by which the watchdog should alert you if the sensor goes outside the limits.

Editing a watchdog activity

To edit an activity, select it in the list and then click the Edit... button. This will cause the Set up watchdog activity window to open, where you will be able to edit all of the activity's details.

Deleting a watchdog activity

To delete an activity, select it in the list and then click the Delete button.

Choosing which activities should be monitored

Next to each activity in the list is a checkbox, selecting this will mean that the watchdog will monitor that activity - so in figure 1, above, for example, the watchdog is monitoring the temperature in ANY-maze cages 1 and 2, but not in cages 3 and 4.

Switching activities on and off is very useful as you can set up a selection of different things you may want to monitor and then select just those that are relevant to you at the moment. So, for example, if you want the watchdog to alert you when the water temperature in your water-maze reaches a certain value then you could switch that activity on and all other activities off.

It's important to understand that no activities at all will be monitored (whether they are 'checked' or not) when the watchdog itself is switched off.

Avoiding multiple alerts

If a temperature sensor, for example, has a limit of 27°C then when the temperature reaches 27.5°C the watchdog will raise an alert. But what happens if the temperature drops a little and then goes back up to 27.5°C again, will another alert be sent?

The answer to this is, yes another alert will be sent, but only if the sensor dropped back to 27°C for 2 minutes and remained there before going over the limit again. Thus the 2 minute delay avoids multiple alerts if a sensor is oscillating around the limit value.

Of course, even with this delay a sensor could still cause multiple alerts, and to avoid this the watchdog will send no more than 4 alerts for any single activity in a period of 4 hours.

Should you need to reset these time delays, then you just need to toggle the watchdog on and off by clicking the Switch on watchdog button in the main toolbar.

See also:

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ANY-maze help topic T0927