ANY-maze Help > I/O devices supported by ANY-maze > Legacy I/O devices > The Parallel Rod floor test > Setting up a Parallel Rod cage for first time use

Setting up a Parallel Rod cage for first time use

Introduction

The Parallel Rod cage communicates with the ANY-maze software using an ANY-maze Touch switch interface. You need to perform the following steps before you can start using the Parallel Rod cage in an experiment:

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Install the driver and connect the ANY-maze Touch switch interface to your computer

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Connect the cage(s) to the ANY-maze Touch switch interface

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Check that each cage is working correctly

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Connect the camera

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Activate your ANY-maze licence

Installing the driver and connecting the ANY-maze Touch switch interface

IMPORTANT: The Parallel Rod cage communicates with the ANY-maze software using an ANY-maze Touch switch interface. You should install the driver software BEFORE you connect the ANY-maze Touch switch interface to your computer.

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).

All ANY-maze interface devices are set up in the same way, so the links below will take you to some generic instructions:

Install the 'ANY-maze USB devices' driver software

Connect the ANY-maze Touch switch interface to your computer

If you have more than one ANY-maze Touch switch interface, you should identify which one is which

If you wish, you can rename the device to give it a more meaningful name

Connecting a Parallel Rod cage to the ANY-maze Touch switch interface

Once you've connected the ANY-maze Touch switch interface to your computer, you simply need to connect each Parallel Rod cage to one of the BNC connectors on the front of the ANY-maze Touch switch interface. If you have multiple Parallel Rod cages, you should connect the one you want to be 'Cage 1' to the left-most BNC connector (port 1), the one you want to be 'Cage 2' to the next BNC connector (port 2), and so on.

The ANY-maze software allows you to run tests in multiple Parallel Rod cages simultaneously. Each ANY-maze Touch switch interface will allow up to four Parallel Rod cages to be connected to ANY-maze - so if you have more than four Parallel Rod cages, you will need more than one ANY-maze Touch switch interface and each one will need its own USB port on the computer. Your computer may not have enough USB ports, especially if it's a notebook; the solution to this 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 each ANY-maze Touch switch interface into the hub - it's that simple. For an ANY-maze Touch switch interface that is used to connect Parallel Rod cages to the computer, you don't need a powered hub.

Checking that each cage is working correctly

Once you have the cage(s) connected to the ANY-maze Touch switch interface, everything should be working correctly, but you can easily check this as follows:

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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.

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On the left of the I/O page is a list of input/output devices, and you should see one entry for each ANY-maze Touch switch interface you have connected to your computer - see figure 2, below.

Figure 1. All connected ANY-maze Touch switch interfaces should be listed on the left of the I/O page.

If your ANY-maze Touch switch interface is not listed in this panel, then:

Firstly check that its USB cable is plugged into the computer and the Touch switch.

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 ANY-maze Touch switch interface, install the driver, and then plug the Touch switch back in again.

If all else fails, contact ANY-maze Support who will be happy to assist you.

Assuming your ANY-maze Touch switch interface is listed, you can check that any cages connected to it are actually working by doing the following:

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Select the ANY-maze Touch switch interface in the list on the left side of the I/O page.

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The Touch Switch will 'open' to show a list of its ports; select the entry for Input switches.

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On the right-hand side of the page, you will see four inputs listed; one for each port on the ANY-maze Touch switch interface. Note that these ports are part of the ANY-maze Touch switch interface, so all four ports will be present even if you don't have a Parallel Rod cage connected to them.

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For each cage that you do have connected, you can use anything conductive to simulate a paw slip by using it to touch both a rod and the base at the same time - the port should then be shown as 'on'.

Figure 2. Testing a paw slip for a Parallel Rod cage connected to port 1 of its ANY-maze Touch switch interface.

Connecting the camera

The Parallel Rod cage is usually supplied with a USB camera - to connect this to ANY-maze, simply plug its USB cable into a spare USB port on your computer.

Activating your ANY-maze licence

You should only activate your licence on the computer you intend to use to actually perform tests in your Parallel Rod cage.

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.