ANY-maze Help > I/O devices supported by ANY-maze > Test equipment designed specifically for ANY-maze > The Orofacial pain assessment device (OPAD) cage > Setting up an OPAD cage for first time use

Setting up an OPAD cage for first time use

Introduction

After assembling an OPAD cage, you need to perform five steps before you can start using it in an experiment:

  
 •Make sure the OPAD cage driver is installed 
 •Connect the cage to your PC  
 •Check that the cage is working correctly 
 •If you have multiple cages you may wish to renumber them 
 •Calibrate the cage's weight sensor (if present) 
 •Activate your ANY-maze licence  

  

Making sure the OPAD cage driver is installed

You must be running ANY-maze as an administrator in order to install drivers. To do this, right-click on the icon you use to start ANY-maze and then select 'Run as administrator' from the menu which appears. (If you run ANY-maze by clicking on an icon in the Windows task bar at the bottom of the screen, then you should right-click the icon, then right-click the entry that reads 'ANY-maze' and then select 'Run as administrator' from the menu which appears).

IMPORTANT: You should install the driver software BEFORE you connect the OPAD cage to your computer.

The driver software is a standard component of the ANY-maze system and can be installed from within ANY-maze itself by following these steps:

 1.Close any open experiment. 
 2.Switch to the Support page. 
 3.In the list on the left side of the page, select Drivers. 
 4.The right-hand side of the page will display the ANY-maze driver settings (see figure 1, below) and towards the top of the list you will see an entry for ANY-maze USB devices which will report the current installed-state of the driver.  
 5.If the driver is not installed then first select it in the list and then click the Install driver button in the ribbon bar. If the button is disabled, it means you are not running ANY-maze as an administrator - see the note above. 

For further details, see the ANY-maze USB device driver topic.

  

  

Figure 1. To install the OPAD driver, you should select the ANY-maze USB driver entry and then click 'Install' in the ribbon bar.

   

Connecting an OPAD cage to your PC

OPAD connects to a PC via USB, so essentially all you need to do is plug the cage into a USB port on your computer and you're done. But don't forget - before plugging in the cages, it is important to check that the driver is installed (see above).

The ANY-maze software allows you to run tests in up to sixteen OPAD cages simultaneously. Of course, if you want to do this, all 16 cages must be connected to your PC - and your computer is unlikely to have 16 USB ports, especially if it's a notebook. The solution is to use a USB hub, a device which has a single connection to your PC on one side and multiple USB ports on the other. USB hubs are available with as many as 16 ports, but inexpensive 4-port hubs are most common.

There's no secret to using a hub; you just plug the hub into your PC and plug your OPAD cages into the hub - it's that simple. For connecting OPAD cages, you don't need a powered hub.

Checking that cage is working correctly

Once you have the driver installed and the OPAD cage connected to your PC then everything should be working correctly, but it would be nice to check. In fact this is easy to do; here's how:

 •In ANY-maze, switch to the I/O page - you can do this by clicking on the I/O tab in the ribbon bar at the top of the screen. 
 •On the left of the I/O page is a list of input/output devices, and you should see one entry for each OPAD cage you have connected to your computer - see figure 2, below.  

  

  

Figure 2. All connected OPAD cages should be listed on the left of the I/O page.

If a cage is not listed in this panel, then:

 1.First, check that the cage is switched on. A cage which is plugged in but not switched on won't be listed - just switch it on and after a few seconds it should appear in the list.  
 2.If the cage is switched on but still isn't listed, then you should check that it is indeed plugged in. If it is, then unplug it, wait 10 seconds and then plug it back in again - after a few seconds it should appear in the list. 
 3.If it still doesn't appear, then follow the instructions above to check that the ANY-maze USB device driver is installed. If the driver is not installed, then unplug the cage, install the driver, and then plug the cage back in again. 
 4.And if all else fails, contact ANY-maze Support who will be happy to assist you.  

  

Assuming your cage is listed, you can check that it is actually working by doing the following:

 •Select the cage in the list on the left side of the I/O page. 
 •The cage will 'open' to show a list of its ports; select the entry for Input switches. 
 •On the right-hand side of the page, you will see three inputs listed: Lick Sensor, Contact Sensor and Start button. Press the push-button on the front of the OPAD cage and check that the Start button changes from red to green. 
 •Another useful test is to check that the thermal elements are working correctly. To do this, click the entry for Temperature controllers in the list of OPAD ports. 
 •The right-hand side of the window will show two items, one for Left Peltier device and one for Right Peltier device, just below them there will be a slider (see figure 3, below). Slide the slider left or right to set some new temperature, for example 10°C - you should find that the thermal elements in the cage start to change temperature (touch them with your finger to check).  

  

  

Figure 3. You can adjust the temperature of the OPAD cage thermal elements using the slider.

Renumbering the cages to put them into order

If you have multiple OPAD cages, they will automatically be given sequential numbers by ANY-maze. This numbering starts at 1, so if you have four cages they will be cage 1, 2, 3 and 4.

However, the software clearly can't know what physical order the cages are in, so you may find that the cages on your bench are numbered something like 3, 1, 4, 2 - and obviously it would make much more sense if you could put them into order. Of course you could move the cages around, but it's easier to renumber them from within the software, as follows:

 1.Switch to the I/O page within ANY-maze. 
 2.Select any one of your OPAD cages in the list on the left side of the page. 
 3.In the ribbon bar, click the Renumber OPAD cages button. 
 4.The Renumber OPAD cages window will open; click the Start... button. 
 5.At this point, all your cages will change to have no cage number and will show "Cage ?" on their displays. 
 6.Press the button on the front of the cage that you want to be cage 1. The display will change to show "Cage 1". 
 7.Press the button on the front of the cage that you want to be cage 2. The display will change to show "Cage 2". 
 8.Continue in this way until you have set the numbers of all the cages so that they are in the order you want.  

Calibrating the OPAD cage weight sensor

The weight sensor is only included in early models of OPAD.

An OPAD cage can't be used in an experiment until its weight sensor has been calibrated, this is a simple process which doesn't take more than a few minutes to perform. Here's what you need to do:

 1.Switch to the I/O page within ANY-maze 
 2.Click the cage you want to calibrate in the list on the left side of the page 
 3.Click the Configure this device button in the ribbon bar 
 4.The 'OPAD configuration' window will open. This window has three 'tabs'; click the Calibration tab 
 5.The OPAD Cage calibration page will be displayed (see figure 4). This page uses a software wizard to guide you through the calibration process, so you can just follow the instruction the wizard provides. But if you prefer, step-by-step instructions can be found here  

  

  

Figure 4. The 'Calibration' page of the OPAD cage configuration window.

By the way, as well as calibrating the cage before you use it for the first time, it's also a good idea to recalibrate under the following circumstances:

 •Recalibrate once a month, during normal use. 
 •If you don't use the cage for a long period, then recalibrate before performing any tests. 
 •If you move the cage to a different location, then recalibrate before performing any tests. 
 •If you want to use the cage in an ambient temperature that is more than 10°C different to the temperature at which it was calibrated.  

Activating your ANY-maze licence

You should only activate your licence on the computer you intend to use to actually perform tests in your OPAD cage(s).

Before you can run any tests in ANY-maze, you'll need to activate your licence. See Activating your ANY-maze licence to find out how to do this.

See also:

 •Performing experiments with the OPAD cage 
 •The ANY-maze licence manager 

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ANY-maze help topic T1199