FEDSync

FEDSync is software designed to control the FED3 Unit over a serial connection

Requirements

Linux

For Linux you will need to download and run the python source code. Python Modules needed

1. pyqt5
2. pySerial

Windows

Windows has a bundled executable which can be downloaded from releases.

Arduino Setup

A custom library for the FED3 device is currently required. (being added to main library)

How to Use

1. Follow the installation guide for the FED3 library from the main github.
2. Replace the Arduino Library code with the custom fork mentioned above
3. You will need to modify the your experiments code to expose the library modifications to serial Using the ClassicFED3 example code as a base We will add the RTC Clock header to the includes
4. When running experiments, once the mode is selected to use use FEDSync to configure and start the recording, then preform a left poke to move the fed device out of a wait mode.

#include "RTClib.h"

Then we will modify the setup function to enable the serial functions

void setup() {
  ...
  fed3.disableSleep();
  fed3.SerialLogging = true;
  Serial.begin(57600);
}

Adding a function to parse commands sent by FEDSync

void parse_command() {
  while(Serial.available()) {
    String command = Serial.readStringUntil('\0');
    if(command == "Reset"){
      fed3.rest_vars();

    } else if(command == "Headers") {
      fed3.sendHeaders();

    } else if(command == "Time") {
      char time[100];
      Serial.readStringUntil('\0').toCharArray(time, 99);
      rtc.adjust(DateTime(time));
      Serial.print(time);
      Serial.write((byte)0);

    } else {
      Serial.print(command);
      Serial.write((byte)0);
    }
  }
}

Before we decalre loop we are going to add a boolean that will to wait for the fed device to be used.

bool started = false;
void loop() {...

Lastly modify the loop to wait for a left poke before starting the device, this will let us talk to the device before we start the experiment

void loop() {
  while(!started) {
    parse_command();
    if(fed3.Left) started = true;
  }
  ...