ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Inputs and outputs > Light controllers > Setting up a light controller > Specifying the effect of activating a light controller

Specifying the effect of activating a light controller

In brief

You should select whether the light controller should turn on for a specific duration and then turn off automatically, or whether it should just remain on until turned off by an explicit action.

Details

The simplest option is to simply turn the light on when the light controller is activated. In this case you will need to use an explicit action to turn the light off again (or set it to reset at the end of the test).

However, in some situations you may always want to turn a light on for a short period and then turn it off again - for example, this is common when the light is being used as a cue. In this case you can simply specify the duration when you set up the light controller and whenever you activate it, it will automatically turn off after the duration you specify.

The duration that you enter can use any of the following units: h (hours), min (minutes), s (seconds) or ms (milliseconds). You can mix units and also specify decimal values. So, for example, the period of one and a half minutes could be entered as '1.5min' or as '1min 30s'. If you don't specify any units, then seconds will be assumed. You can enter any period from 50 milliseconds to 1 hour.

If the light controller is also set to ramp on or off then the duration will include any ramp on time, but exclude any ramp off time - see figure 1 below.

Figure 1. The duration that a light controller is on will include any ramp on time but exclude any ramp off time.

ANY-maze help topic T1391