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Events available to procedures

Introduction

Events represent things that may occur as the test is run. These could be events due to animal movement (the animal enters a zone, the animal freezes, etc.) or I/O events (a lever was pressed, etc.), or other events such as the test ending.

If you've used previous versions of ANY-maze, these events are similar to the events in the old 'Events and Actions' system.

A basic set of events is listed automatically on the left-hand side of the procedure editor under the Events tab; you can set up more complex events by clicking the Create event button in the ribbon bar. These user-defined events are usually similar to the basic events, but with an additional time constraint or a count of a number of events occurring.

For example, the basic list of events will include an event for Animal becomes immobile, but using the Create event button you can set up an event that will occur when the animal has remained immobile for a specific period of time.

There are a great many events in the procedure system, and they are described below. You can also see what is available by expanding all the event groups in the Events tab of the procedure editor. Events will be available for all relevant items in the protocol list - zones, points, animal activity, key presses, I/O inputs, and more. Hovering over the relevant event will show a tool tip giving you more information on that event.

An event in a procedure must be used within a Wait until statement. Once the procedure has waited for an event, you can then use it in an If statement. This would be useful if, for example, you had waited for one of a number of events to happen. However, an event cannot be used in an If statement without first being waited for.

If you try and use an event in an If statement without first waiting for it, this will result in an error in the procedure editor, and the test will not run.

Note that a procedure that waits for an event will only continue to run when the event next occurs - so, for example, a procedure that waits for the Animal enters zone event will not continue execution past this statement if the animal is already in the zone. It will only continue execution when the animal leaves the zone and then re-enters it again.

Test performance events

Test is waiting to start

This event will fire when the test is waiting to start. This will be when you click the (Start test) button for the apparatus.

Note that this event exists to allow simple cleanup at the end of the test, and will continue to run until it's finished; you cannot use another 'Wait until' statement or a 'Repeat...' statement after this event (this will end the procedure).

Note that while the test is paused, procedures will not respond to any events except for the Test un-paused event.

This event will only fire if the test was stopped using the action End the test, but allow continuation (or End the test (specifying reason), but allow continuation).

Timer events

Timer events, or Time elapsed events, will fire when a specified time period has elapsed.

Note that the Time elapsed event will start timing from the first point that it is encountered by the procedure, and not from the start of the test.

If you want to wait for the time elapsed since the beginning of the test, use the Create event button to open the Event trigger wizard and select A specific duration since the start of the test from the list of Triggers that relate to time.

Timer events are slightly different to normal events. Since you may have a procedure that waits for multiple Time elapsed events to occur (with each one potentially waiting for a different time), each Time elapsed event is given a unique numerical ID. So if you wait for a time to elapse, and then use that event in an If statement, you can match up the Time elapsed event using its timer ID.

Figure 1. This procedure waits for a specific time to elapse; it can then use that same timer in the following If statement.

When entering the time to wait for, you can either type in a valid time (using the units d, h, m, s, ms for days, hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds) or use an expression that returns a numerical value. If you use an expression (or just type in a number, without any units), then the value will be assumed to be in seconds.

Figure 2. Times can be entered as text, or as a numeric expression, in which case the number evaluated will be assumed to be in seconds.

Zone events

Point events

Animal position events

These events can happen quite frequently during the test; perhaps around 30 times per second.

Mobility events

The protocol's immobility settings are used to determine when the animal becomes mobile or immobile.

Activity events

Note that these events are only included for legacy reasons and are not available to be included in new procedures. Activity depends on a number of separate conditions - for example, whether the animal is mobile, or a key is pressed that counts as an activity. However, immobility cannot be detected immediately - there is a 'timeout period' specified, and until the end of that timeout, the system doesn't know that the animal has gone immobile (so the current state is still 'mobile' until the end of the timeout). Even though the animal has actually stopped moving (but the system hasn't yet detected it), during this timeout period something else - such as a keypress - might indicate the animal being active. But because the system has not yet detected the inactive state (it still thinks the animal is mobile), it effectively 'misses' the activity keypress and therefore does not generate an event for it.

Because of this inability to detect the active and inactive state during the test, ANY-maze no longer generates events for the animal becoming active and inactive. (Note that activity can still be calculated during result analysis, because at that point the system has a full history of exactly what happened at every point during the test).

Freezing events

The protocol's freezing detection settings are used to determine when the animal freezes and unfreezes.

Rearing events

These events are only available if the Video source for the apparatus is set to view the apparatus from the side rather than from above.

Sequence events

Key press events

On/off input events

Rotary encoder events

Signal input events

If the sample rate of the input is more that 100Hz, the rate at which new values are received by the procedure will be limited to 100Hz.

If you are using signal value events to determine when the value of a signal goes above or below a certain threshold, you can set up a Virtual Switch to detect the threshold, and then wait for this Virtual Switch event in the procedure.

Sensor events

On/off output events

Speaker events

Shocker events

Pellet dispenser events

Note that the 'Pellet dispenser dispense failed' event will fire every time that the pellet dispenser is asked to dispense a pellet, but fails. If the pellet dispenser is out of pellets, but the animal's actions result in further attempts to dispense pellets, the 'failed' event will fire each time. If you're using the event to send you an SMS message, for example, you won't want a message every time this happens - just the once, so you can fill up the pellet dispenser again. Figure 3 shows how you can use a procedure to ensure that only a single message is sent.

Figure 3. This procedure will monitor the 'Reward' pellet dispenser, and send an SMS message when there is an error dispensing a pellet. A user-defined variable is used to prevent multiple messages being generated.

Syringe pump events

Laser controller events

Analogue output events

This event can occur fairly frequently - perhaps 30 times a second.

Temperature controller events

Light controller events

Selector events

Selectors are only available on certain types of device (such as the ANY-maze Operant interface and Ugo Basile Operon).

Virtual switch events

Errors & Warnings events

User-defined events

If none of the pre-defined events in the list are quite right for you, you can create your own. To do this, use the Create event button in the ribbon bar. This will open the Event trigger wizard which will lead you a step at a time through the process of defining the trigger for the event.

User-defined events are mostly events which apply counts or durations to the standard events listed under the Procedures tab of the procedure editor, for example:

Once you've set up a user-defined event, it will be available to all procedures in the protocol.

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ANY-maze help topic T0488