ANY-maze Help > I/O devices supported by ANY-maze > Ugo Basile instruments supported by ANY-maze > The Ugo Basile Fear Conditioning Cage > Setting up and testing an Ugo Basile Fear Conditioning cage

Setting up and testing an Ugo Basile Fear Conditioning cage

This topic describes the steps required to set up and test an Ugo Basile Fear Conditioning cage for use within ANY-maze. For more general set-up instructions, refer to the manual provided with the system.

You should install ANY-maze before you connect the Fear Conditioning cage to your computer for the first time.

Set up

Setting up a Fear Conditioning cage for use within ANY-maze is fairly straightforward, as all you have to do is connect the cage to power and to your PC. However, there are some rules about how you should do this.

Setting up a system with more than 4 fear conditioning cages 

If you have more than 4 cages, then you will almost certainly need to connect them to multiple USB ports on your computer through one or more hubs. For example, if you have 6 cages you might be able to connect 2 directly to your computer and the remaining 4 to a hub, which is then connected to your computer. But if you have 8 cages, you might connect them to 2 hubs and then connect the hubs to your computer (remember, you can't connect more than 4 cages to one hub).

In all cases, you will need to check the USB ports on your computer, as you can't simply connect to any port and guarantee that everything will work. This may seem a little strange, as you would probably expect that you can just plug the cages/hubs into any port. The reason this might not work is because the USB cable from the hub will be carrying a lot of data (all the data from the four cameras in the cages), and this will be close to the maximum amount of data that a single USB controller can cope with. The important thing about this is that the USB ports on your computer will not necessarily connect to separate controllers - so, for example, two ports on the front of a computer might connect to the same controller, and if they do, and you connect 4 fear conditioning cages, via a hub, to one of them, then it will use up all of the controller's data capacity leaving none for the other port(s).

So, what you will need to do is to connect the hubs to USB ports on your computer that use distinct controllers. This isn't as complicated as it may sound, as there's a useful utility in ANY-maze that will help you - here's what you need to do.

Figure 1. The ANY-maze USB viewer shows the structure of the computer's USB system.

Figure 2. The ANY-maze USB viewer showing a hub connected to Port 1 of a USB controller (highlighted in green). The hub has 4 Fear Conditioning cages (highlighted in pink) connected to it. This controller has another three ports (port 2, 3 and 4 - shown at the bottom of the figure), but these shouldn't be used for any other Fear Conditioning cages, as the cages that are already connected will use all the USB controller's data capacity.

Figure 3. You shouldn't plug-in any other Fear Conditioning cages to the controller highlighted in green, but you could plug them into the ports of the controller highlighted in orange.

If you find that your computer simply doesn't have enough USB ports connected to different controllers, then you will need to add another controller to your PC. This is quite simple provided you are using a desktop computer, where you will be able to add a 'USB adaptor card'. If you need any help or advice about this, just ANY-maze Support.

Testing

After you have set up the system, you should test that everything is working correctly; here's what you should do:

Figure 4. The Fear Conditioning cages are listed on the left of the I/O page. You will only see as many cages listed as you actually have connected to your PC.

5.

Select the Identify this device button in the ribbon bar.

If all the above steps are performed successfully, then the cage is correctly connected to your PC. Next you should test the cameras:

If all the tests are performed successfully, your Fear Conditioning cages are set up and ready to be used in experiments.

Troubleshooting

One or more of my cages is not listed on the I/O page

My cage is listed, but when I choose Identify the selected device, the lights don't flash

My cage is listed, but I can't control it from the I/O page (for example, sounds don't play, or lights don't dim, etc.)

My cages are listed on the I/O page, but my cameras are not listed on the Video page

My cameras are listed on the Video page, but they are not called 'Fear Conditioning cage camera 1', etc.

When I alter the Lighting on the camera's properties page, the lighting doesn't change

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ANY-maze help topic T1254