Cricket Hunt VR

A closed-loop VR environment for the study of hunting behaviour in mice.

Software dependencies

These should only need to be installed once on a fresh new system, and are not required if simply refreshing the install or deploying to a new folder.

• Windows 10
• Visual Studio Code (recommended for editing code scripts and git commits)
• .NET Framework 4.7.2 Developer Pack (required for intellisense when editing code scripts)
• Git for Windows (recommended for cloning and manipulating this repository)
• Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 (native dependency for OpenCV)
• FTDI CDM Driver 2.12.28 (serial port drivers for HARP devices)
• Spinnaker SDK 1.29.0.5 (device drivers for FLIR cameras)
  • On FLIR website: Download > archive > 1.29.0.5 > SpinnakerSDK_FULL_1.29.0.5_x64.exe
• pylon 7.1.0 Camera Software Suite (device drivers for Basler cameras)

ARM documentation can be found here

https://github.com/SainsburyWellcomeCentre/virt-hunt-drv

Default COM Ports

Board	COM port
Harp Behavior	COM2
Harp Expander	COM3
Arm Controller	COM4
Harp Clock Synchronizer	COM5

Currently implemented software events

General Notes

• All payloads are of the type Timestamped_<dataType>. For the sake of brevity the Timestamped will be ommited from the payload's format.
• Unless otherwise stated, timestamping is achieved using the latest available photodiode event (~1kHz) as a timestamp source.

TaskLogic

• TaskLogic\TaskLogic_address.bin [HARP data format]

  name	address	payload	attributes	description
  trial_initiation	1	U8	[trial_number]	Event timestamping the start of the trial.
  perturbation_onset	2	U8	[0]	Event timestamping the cricket arm perturbation onset.
  trial_end	3	U8	[0]	Event timestamping the end of the trial.
  cricket_eat_end	4	U8	[0]	Event timestamping the end of the period animals are allowed to eat the cricket for.
  position_reset	11	float [6]	[x,y,z,angle_x,angle_y,angle_z]	Whenever the position of the mouse is manually reset outputs an event containing the target position
  play_audio_stim	12	U8	[0]	Event that signals the triggering of a sound playback

To create the python env

python -m venv .venv