Whether your experiment uses passive timed vapor delivery or lets the animal self-administer, our controllers handle it all, with on-board SD-card data logging to a CSV file you can open in Excel.
Simple touch-screen passive control of drug delivery. Set the time and the amount, that's all. Ideal for maintaining consistent drug levels at set intervals.
Let the mouse or rat decide how much, and which drug, with nose poke, lever press, or turning-wheel response devices across two channels.
All the options of passive and self-administration experiments across eight separate channels of control, for higher-throughput studies.
The Scientific Vapor 2-channel passive and self-administration controller gives the user several options for controlling our vaporizers. Whether your experiment uses passive timed administration of vapor or lets a mouse or rat self-administer, this two-channel controller handles it, with the helpful features below.
On the passive timed settings screen you set the amount of vapor in seconds, which is how long the vaporizer runs producing vapor into the cage. You then set the number of repeat cycles. For example, if you want 20 seconds of vapor but the coil can only run for 10 seconds at a time, set two 10-second repeat cycles to reach 20 seconds total.
Passive settings also include a delay, or wait time, between vapor sessions, chosen in hours, minutes, and seconds. For instance, to deliver a 5-second blast of vapor every five minutes, set the vape time to 5 seconds and the wait time to 5 minutes. The animal then receives a 5-second blast every five minutes until you turn passive mode off.
On the settings page you configure the self-administration parameters you want. It features a poke count, vape time, time-out delay, and preset gradual-scale settings.
The main screen has several options. On the timed-trigger side are two OFF buttons, one for Unit 1 and one for Unit 2, representing the attached vaporizers. After setup, press OFF to switch it to "Working," illuminated green, meaning your passive experiment is underway.
On the nose-poke side you will see the same OFF buttons plus a current count and trigger count. The current count shows how many times the IR beam or lever has been activated, so you can see how often vapor was requested. The trigger count is how many activations it takes to fire the vaporizer. These are configured in the settings menu under Nose Poke Triggered.
Under automatic settings (Settings Menu / Automatic) you can set a start and stop time for an experiment. Enter the hour, minute, and second to start, then press the OFF button above the desired time so it turns ON and illuminates green. Set up your vape time under either the timed-trigger or nose-poke screens, return to the main page, and switch Units 1 or 2 from OFF to ON. The top of the screen will read "automatic is turned: ON." At the start time, the signal fires the vaporizer and the session begins. This is ideal for passive experiments that should start and stop at a set time of day.
The log screen shows both time-triggered events and nose-poke totals. Time-triggered totals show a running count of how long the vaporizer has been on. Poke-triggered totals show both the on-time and the total number of pokes the animal made. Before any experiment, press RESET on the log screen to clear previous logs.
Using the provided 2 GB SD card, each experiment is recorded to a CSV file showing each vaporizer unit, its vapor time, and the nose-poke count for each poke. The data opens directly in Excel.
Our 8-channel controller scales passive and self-administration studies, and we build custom controllers and response devices to order.