Computer-controlled dog treat dispenser

This project retrofits an existing off-the-shelf dog treat dispenser with new electronics that allow it to be controlled by a computer.

Overview

When performing canine operant conditioning studies, the delivery of the reward can be a limiting factor of the study. While there are a few commercially available options for automatically delivering rewards, they generally require manual input, such as using a remote control, in accordance with the experiment script. This means that human reaction times and transmission distances can cause interruptions to the flow of the experiment. The potential for development of non-supervised conditioning studies is limited by this same factor. To remedy this, we retrofitted an off-the-shelf treat dispenser with new electronics that allow it to be remotely controllable as well as act as an experiment computation, data storage, and networking center. We present a fully integrated dispenser driver board with a complementary Raspberry Pi. With rather simple modifications, the commercial treat dispenser can be modified into a computer-controlled dispenser for canine cognition experiments or for other forms of canine training or games.

Demonstration video

License

The software and hardware designs are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-SA 4.0). You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms:

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

Contact

This project was conducted by the Canine Cognition and Human Interaction Lab and funded by the National Science Foundation. For questions, please contact the developer Walker Arce (warce@unomaha.edu) or the principal investigator Jeffrey R. Stevens (jeffrey.r.stevens@gmail.com).

Citation

Arce, W., & Stevens, J. R. (2020). Developing a computer-controlled treat dispenser for canine operant conditioning. Journal of Open Hardware, 4(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.5334/joh.27

Project Mentions

Hackaday

Open Neuroscience

Dataset Metadata

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