ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Inputs and outputs > Laser controllers > Setting up a laser controller > Specifying whether the physical port used by a laser controller is always the same

Specifying whether the physical port used by a laser controller is always the same

The option described in this topic is only shown when a protocol includes at least one movable zone.

In brief

In the majority of situations (especially in the case of optogenetics), the physical port used by a laser controller will always be the same - it's simply the port on the interface device to which the laser actually connects.

However, you may encounter situations in which the port depends on the location of a movable zone. For example, in a Y-maze, you may have three lasers, each mounted in one of the arms of the maze. Now you want to create an element called 'Goal arm laser' (let's imagine that the laser comes on if the animal spends a certain amount of time in this arm), but you have set the 'Goal arm' to be a movable zone - i.e. it isn't always the same physical arm of the maze, but changes between tests. Thus the 'Goal arm laser' will be the laser in whichever arm happens to be the goal arm in a particular test, which necessarily means it won't always be the same physical laser (and therefore 'Goal arm laser' won't always be connected to the same physical port).

Details

If you do have a laser controller whose physical port depends on the location of a movable zone, like in the Y-maze example above, then you simply need to specify this by selecting the appropriate option from the drop-down list in the laser controller element's page of the protocol.

When you do this, the element will automatically be given one 'Port to use' sub-element for each location of the movable zone you chose - so in the Y-maze example, there will be three 'Port to use' sub-elements, one for each arm of the maze. You'll then be able to use these sub-elements to specify which port is used for each of the possible locations of the zone.

ANY-maze help topic T0249