ANY-maze Help > I/O devices supported by ANY-maze > Test equipment designed specifically for ANY-maze > The ANY-maze Activity wheel > Configuring the Activity wheel > Changing the ID of an Activity wheel

Changing the ID of an Activity wheel

Introduction

Each Activity wheel connected to your computer has a unique 'wheel number'. This is automatically assigned to the wheel when it is first connected, and the numbering will typically start from 1 and work up.

It doesn't actually matter what the wheel numbers are, but usually you will want to number multiple wheels as 1, 2, 3 etc. Not only will you want to number them in sequence, but you'll probably also want the numbers to be in order - that's to say, if you have three wheels in a row then the first is 1, the second is 2 and the third is 3.

Reorganising the order of wheels

This 'ordering' of the wheels is something that ANY-maze can't do automatically because, of course, it doesn't know what order you'll place the wheels on the bench. So, you may find that your wheels are ordered as 3, 1, 2 rather than 1, 2, 3.

The easiest solution to this is not to manually renumber the wheels one by one, but rather to use the Renumber ANY-maze Activity wheels button which is displayed in the ribbon bar on the I/O page when you have 2 or more Activity wheels of the same type (rat or mouse) connected to your PC. This option allows you to quickly renumber all the connected wheels by turning them one at a time, in sequence.

Manually renumbering wheels

Although the most common reason for renumbering wheels is because they are not in sequential order, there are other situations in which you may wish to renumber just one individual wheel. For example, a wheel may have broken and you now want to give its replacement the same number as the old wheel.

To renumber a wheel, you should open the wheel's configuration window and then click the Change number button. This will cause the Change Activity wheel number window to open, into which you can enter the new number you want to give the wheel - see figure 1.

Figure 1. The Change Activity wheel number window.

There are just two rules you need to be aware of when numbering a wheel:

However, if you break either of these two rules, ANY-maze will tell you and you'll need to enter a different wheel number.

Wheels remember their numbers

A wheel's number is stored inside the wheel, so whenever you plug the wheel into your computer, it will always be shown with the same number. Having said that, there is a situation in which a wheel's number can change without you altering it, and that's when two wheels plugged into the same computer both have the same number. For example, imagine you plugged a wheel into your computer and set it to be wheel 2. Then you UNPLUGGED it and plugged another wheel in and set it to be wheel 2 as well; then you plugged the other wheel back in - now there would be two wheel 2s. In this situation, ANY-maze will automatically renumber one of the two wheels to whichever number is 'next' - which it determines by scanning from 1 upwards, looking for a 'space' in the existing wheels' numbering. So if we had just two wheels plugged in and they were both set to be wheel 2, ANY-maze would renumber the one you plug in second (when it detects the problem) to be wheel 1 (as there's no wheel 1 plugged in).

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ANY-maze help topic T1383