ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Testing > Procedures > Preventing a test from starting until an I/O device is ready

Preventing a test from starting until an I/O device is ready

Overview

Experiments often rely on the use of external devices, and sometimes need these devices to be in a certain state before the experiment starts. The most common example is probably that of temperature - apparatus with thermal plates might need the temperatures of these plates to be correct before the test should start, or the water in a water-maze might need to be at a certain temperature. ANY-maze allows you to prevent a test from being started until certain conditions have been met.

Details

Two actions are available to ANY-maze procedures which can control whether or not a test can be started:

•

Prevent test start

•

Allow test start

These actions can only be used in the shaded area at the top of a procedure, since they are only applicable before the test has started.

The Prevent test start action will simply cause the (Start test) button to be disabled. You must specify some text when you use this action; this text will be displayed above the apparatus image to explain why the test cannot be started.

Once the relevant condition has been met, you can use the Allow test start to remove this text and enable the (Start test) button.

Note that Temperature controllers already have a way of specifying a start temperature (and preventing a test from starting if that temperature is not reached) - see Specifying a temperature controller's start temperature for details on how to do this.

Example

The following example shows a procedure for an experiment where the animal can activate or deactivate some levers. The test must start with the levers in the 'inactive' position; this simple procedure will prevent the text test from starting until the levers have been restored to their inactive positions.

Figure 1. This procedure will prevent the test from starting until the two levers are in the correct position.

Note that the statements in this procedure are all in the shaded area at the top of the procedure, i.e. they are run before the test starts.

ANY-maze help topic T0470