ANY-maze Help > I/O devices supported by ANY-maze > Ugo Basile instruments supported by ANY-maze > The Ugo Basile Thermal Gradient Ring > Setting up an ANY-maze protocol for the Thermal Gradient Ring
Setting up an ANY-maze protocol for the Thermal Gradient Ring
Introduction
In this section. we are going to look at the steps involved in setting up a simple protocol to use the Thermal Gradient Ring. This can then be used as a basis for more specific protocols, depending on the requirements of your experiments.
As you may already know, protocols are fundamental to how ANY-maze works, because it is the protocol which defines how an experiment will be performed. Even if you have never used ANY-maze before, you will probably get along fine just following though the steps in this section, but if you want to know more about protocols then a good place to start is this introductory tutorial on protocols.
| • | Creating an experiment |
| • | Setting the protocol mode and adding a Thermal Gradient Ring to it |
| • | Reviewing the Thermal Gradient Ring I/O protocol elements |
| • | Setting the test duration |
| • | Saving the protocol |
Creating an experiment
Before you can do anything in ANY-maze, you need to open an experiment. In this respect, ANY-maze is similar to Microsoft Word, where you can't do anything until you open a document. So the first thing you need to do is to start ANY-maze and select New empty experiment from the list of protocols on the right side of the opening page.
On the other hand, if ANY-maze is already running, you should simply switch to the File page, select New experiment from the list on the left and then select New empty experiment from the list of protocols on the right.
Setting the protocol mode and adding a Thermal Gradient Ring to it
Now that you have an experiment open, you need to set the protocol mode and then add a Thermal Gradient Ring to the protocol.
The protocol mode defines which features of ANY-maze will be available.
| 1. | Switch to the Protocol page by clicking the Protocol tab in the ribbon bar. |
| 2. | Click the first item in the list on the left of the page - this will probably be called 'Unnamed protocol'. |
| 3. | If you have a Thermal Gradient Ring-specific ANY-maze licence (which will usually be the case unless you already owned ANY-maze when you bought the Thermal Gradient Ring), then the protocol mode will already be Ugo Basile Thermal Gradient Ring mode. If it isn't, then open the protocol mode list and select this mode, as shown in figure 1. |
Figure 1. You should use the Protocol mode list to select Ugo Basile Thermal Gradient Ring mode.
| 3. | Next, we need to add our Thermal Gradient Ring to the protocol. This will tell ANY-maze which Thermal Gradient Ring (or rings) we actually want to use. You can include up to 40 Thermal Gradient Rings in an experiment, but to keep things simple we'll just include one. So, you now need to click the  Add item button and then select New Thermal Gradient Ring in the menu that appears - see figure 2. |
Figure 2. The New Thermal Gradient Ring menu option opens a sub menu, from which you can choose the device(s) to add to the protocol.
| 4. | As can be seen in figure 2, the New Thermal Gradient Ring option opens a sub menu which lists the Thermal Gradient Rings connected to your computer, together with an option to Add all connected Thermal Gradient Rings. For this protocol we just want to include one device, so select the option to Add Thermal Gradient Ring 1 |
| 5. | When you add a Thermal Gradient Ring, it appears in the protocol list, as in figure 3. |
Figure 3. Thermal Gradient Rings are added to the protocol list.
| 6. | Selecting the Thermal Gradient Ring's entry in the list causes its settings to be displayed in the settings pane to the right of the list; see figure 4. |
By the way, this is how the entire protocol works - you add things using the 
Add item button, they get included in the protocol list and you can then select them and alter the settings in the settings pane.
Figure 4. The Thermal Gradient Ring settings pane.
The settings for a Thermal Gradient Ring are automatically set to default values, and you probably won't need to change them.
Reviewing the Thermal Gradient Ring I/O protocol elements
Because ANY-maze already knows you are setting up a protocol for a Thermal Gradient Ring (since that's the mode we put it into), then it will automatically have added temperature sensors for the four thermal sensors on the Thermal Gradient Ring.
Figure 5. The Thermal Gradient Ring I/O elements are automatically included in the protocol list.
You will usually not need to make any changes to these elements.
Setting up stages and specifying the test duration
Another element that is automatically included in a Thermal Gradient Ring protocol is a Stage. This is because ANY-maze requires that all protocols always include at least one stage, and the Thermal Gradient Ring is no exception.
A stage is simply a test (or a group of tests) that you perform on your animals. In Thermal Gradient Ring experiments you will usually test the animal only once, so you can simply use the existing 'First stage'. For more information about stages, see An introduction to stages.
The 'First stage' that is automatically included in the protocol has just a single trial - see figure 6. Obviously you can edit this stage to suit your experiment, and add more stages if required.
Figure 6. The default settings for the first stage in a Thermal Gradient Ring protocol
Full details about stages can be found here, but suffice to say that it is in the stage's settings that you specify the duration of your tests. As can be seen in figure 6, ANY-maze does not include a default duration, so you will need to set this value before you can actually perform any tests.
 | Throughout ANY-maze, times can be specified using units of 'ms' for milliseconds, 's' for seconds, 'min' or 'm' for minutes, 'h' for hours and 'd' for days. You can mix these units if you wish, for example '3h 30min', and you can use decimal points, for example '3.5h'. |
Save the protocol
You may have noticed that other than adding the Thermal Gradient Ring (or rings) to the protocol, the only other thing we had to add to the protocol was the duration of the tests. Nevertheless, you will typically alter the default settings a little, and this being the case you will usually want to save the protocol so you can use it again in other experiments. To do this, you need to click the 
Save protocol button in the ribbon bar.
What next?
In this topic, we created a simple Thermal Gradient Ring protocol. Now that we have this set up, we are ready to move on to the next topic of this tutorial - Performing experiments and analysing results for the Thermal Gradient Ring
See also:
 | The topics listed below are general topics relating to ANY-maze, and may refer to features not available or not required with the Thermal Gradient Ring. |
| • | An introductory tutorial on protocols |
| • | The elements of a protocol |
| • | Adding elements to a protocol |
| • | Editing the elements of a protocol |
| • | Deleting elements from a protocol |
| • | Saving and loading protocols |
| • | Viewing the protocol report |
© Copyright 2003-2026 Stoelting Co. All rights reserved
ANY-maze help topic T1266