ANY-maze Help > I/O devices supported by ANY-maze > The ANY-maze interface device family > The ANY-maze Synchronisation interface > The ANY-maze Synchronisation interface configuration window

The ANY-maze Synchronisation interface configuration window

Introduction

The ANY-maze Synchronisation interface configuration window allows you to set the direction of the ports and specify whether the inputs and outputs are active high or low.

Unlike most of the other ANY-maze interface devices, the ANY-maze Synchronisation interface cannot be reprogrammed, nor can its device ID be changed.

Accessing the ANY-maze Synchronisation interface configuration window

To access the ANY-maze Synchronisation interface configuration window, select your device in the list on the left side of the I/O page and then click the Configure this device button in the ribbon bar.

Figure 1. The ANY-maze Synchronisation interface configuration window.

Setting the direction of the ports

Each of the six ports on the ANY-maze Synchronisation interface can be independently configured as a TTL input or a TTL output. To set a port's direction, simply select the appropriate button in the configuration window - see figure 1, above.

Debouncing inputs

Debouncing an input is useful when the input is connected to a physical switch (more on this below), but in general an input on the ANY-maze Synchronisation interface will be connected to a TTL output (usually on your electrophysiology system) and in this case the input does not need to be debounced. Indeed debouncing an input adds a delay of 20ms, so you should avoid debouncing inputs unless it's actually required. For this reason the option to debounce the inputs of the ANY-maze Synchronisation interface is switched off by default.

What does debouncing an input mean and why would you want to do it?

When a switch closes the two contacts (which are usually springy pieces of metal) often bounce open and closed a few times before they settle down - this is a normal phenomenon, known as 'contact bounce' and generally only last for a few milliseconds. However, consider what happens if the switch is linked to a lever that the animal can press and you want to count the number of lever presses. As the switch bounces open and closed, ANY-maze will count multiple presses, so while the animal only actually presses the lever once, ANY-maze might register 4 presses. Fortunately there's a simple solution to this issue which is to wait a until the switch settles down, i.e. until there are no further changes for some set period, known as the 'debounce interval'. If you choose to debounce the inputs of an ANY-maze Synchronisation interface then a fixed debounce interval of 20ms will be used.

Selecting the active state for inputs and outputs

As you'll probably know, a TTL signal can adopt one of two states: high or low; but which of these should be considered the 'active' state - i.e. should an output which has been set active, become high or low? It might seem intuitive to say that the active state is high and the inactive state is low (and this is the default setting used by the ANY-maze Synchronisation interface), but many TTL systems use low as the active state. For this reason you can configure the active state of the ANY-maze Synchronisation interface inputs and outputs, although you should note that the settings affect all the inputs or all the outputs, i.e. you can't configure the individual inputs and outputs independently.

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