ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Tests page > The Test window > Clearing test information ready for the next test

Clearing test information ready for the next test

Introduction

When a test ends, the Test window panels will show data about the test that has just been completed. Often, you'll want to review this information before moving on to the next test.

Nevertheless, at some point, this data will need to be cleared (ready for the next test), which can either happen automatically, or manually, depending on the settings you specify in the protocol. This topic outlines the options available to you, and what each of them does.

Figure 1. The options to choose when panels should be cleared are defined in the protocol, but they can also be set from the Test Page's Panel Settings window, which is often more convenient than switching to the Protocol page.

Details

Under the Test window panels settings in the protocol, there are three options that you can choose, and they're described in detail below:

•

Clear the panels when the next test begins

•

Clear the panels when the 'Prepare next test' button is clicked

•

Clear the panels immediately the previous test ends

Clearing the panels when the next test begins

Usually, you'll want everything to happen automatically:

•

When a test ends, ANY-maze will leave the information in all the panels from the test that's just finished, so you can review it.

•

When you click the

Start test button to start the next test, the panels will be cleared ready to start collecting information for the new test.

This is how ANY-maze will work by default. Note that in some situations this option may not be available; why this might happen is described below.

Clearing the panels manually, by clicking the 'Prepare next test' button

Using this option you can choose when the panels are cleared, simply by clicking the Prepare next test button. Note that you won't be able to start the next test until you have clicked the button.

If the first option (to clear the panels when the next test begins) is not available, ANY-maze will choose this option by default. Why this might happen is described below.

Clearing the panels immediately the previous test ends

If you're not really interested in the information that ANY-maze is showing in the Test window panels, then you can just choose to have it cleared when the previous test ends.

Why the option to 'Clear the panels when the next test begins' might not be available

To understand why ANY-maze might disable the option to Clear the panels when the next test begins, we need to dig a bit deeper into what happens within ANY-maze in between a test ending and the next test beginning.

When a test finishes in ANY-maze, the results of that test are saved and ANY-maze starts to 'prepare' the next test. This means that it resets any information that is required for the next test - for example, any I/O that was used in the previous test will get set to its default state (outputs will get turned off; speaker volumes and frequencies will get reset to their defaults, etc.) and the position of any movable zones will get set (or ANY-maze may ask you to select the position of such zones).

This means that internally, the things that ANY-maze has set up for the next test may not agree with what you are seeing on the Test window panels - for example, if a speaker was playing a 3kHz tone at the end of the previous test, the I/O Status panel would show this, but once the speaker has been reset it might actually be playing a different tone. Likewise, if the position of a movable zone had changed ready for the next test, the Zones panel would still show the position as it was in the previous test that had just finished.

To avoid the potential confusion of having the Test window panels showing information which is no longer correct, ANY-maze introduces the option to Clear the panels when the 'Prepare next test' button is clicked. This simply means that after a test ends, you'll need to click the Prepare next test button to clear the information from the previous test (and cause the next test to be set up).

If there's anything in your experiment which means that the information in the Test window panels might disagree with what's been set up for the next test, ANY-maze will select this option automatically (and disable the option to clear the panels when the next test begins) - this just means that between one test and the next, you'll always have to go through the extra step of preparing the next test before you can start it (or you can choose to Clear the panels immediately the previous test ends).

ANY-maze will automatically select the option to Clear the panels when the 'Prepare next test' button is clicked when your protocol contains any of the following:

•

Any movable zones

•

Any procedures containing actions which can alter an I/O output's settings from their defaults (e.g. speaker frequency, or shocker duration)

•

Any sensors are set to be read before the test starts when the sensor's key is pressed.