Automated mouse homecage two-bottle choice test v2

Mini tube holder!
Lex Kravitz • 08/11/2019 at 04:38 • 0 comments

For a different project we needed a simple tube holder to fit in a cage without a wire rack. The sipper design was perfect, and we printed this small part of it:
This hangs over the cage edge like this:, providing a simple way to use a sipper tube as a water bottle, or for simple manual measurement. STL in the files area!
Editable 3D design
Lex Kravitz • 03/06/2019 at 16:04 • 0 comments

The 3D design was developed in TinkerCAD and an editable design is available here:
https://www.tinkercad.com/things/gPan0GUSNkd
Please don't judge us! This device went though a very iterative design process so the current design build is a bit complicated. We'll hopefully re-design this more simply and update in the future (or if someone does this please let us know so we can post better design files!).
Troubleshooting
Lex Kravitz • 02/04/2019 at 17:03 • 0 comments

This log is about troubleshooting. I'll add to it as we identify troubleshooting issues. Please leave a comment if you know of any others!
1) Sipper position
While the electronics on the sipper device are pretty much bulletproof, we have noticed the position of the sipper tubes can shift a bit, so these should be checked carefully. Specifically, it's possible for one tube to move out of the detection beam, which obviously introduces error into the experiment. Here's an example, with the red line estimating the position of the detection beam. The sipper on the right is positioned too far from the detection beam.
We're working on updating the 3D design to reduce this possibility, but either way it's a good idea to check this before putting them in with mice!
Quick video
Lex Kravitz • 02/01/2019 at 19:37 • 1 comment

Quick video of sippers in action, showing water vs. chocolate
Rat v2.0 design coming soon!
jkhokhar • 11/07/2018 at 19:06 • 0 comments

We are getting closer to a finalized design for use with rats v2.0. Hope to upload it all here by the end of the month. This version has a much smaller footprint compared to the previous version. We are just working on finalizing the mounting via suction cups and the code for the volume measurement. Stay tuned!
Modification for rats!
Lex Kravitz • 10/23/2018 at 23:07 • 0 comments

Dr. Jibran Khokhar at the University of Guelph has modified this sipper device to measure liquid intake in rats. Really cool! He also added an eTape liquid level monitor to measure actual intake as well as the number of interactions with the sipper. He plans to put the full design online soon, but in the meantime here are some photos!
TTL output when mouse interacts with sippers
Lex Kravitz • 10/06/2018 at 17:12 • 0 comments

We made a slight update to the code and design to give the sippers 2 TTL output connections that can sync sipper interactions with external equipment such as a fiber photometry or ephys recording system. There is now an optional step in the instructions for which pins to solder these BNC connectors (to A1 and A3), and an update to the code to enable these pins as outputs.
Homecage validation!
Lex Kravitz • 09/16/2018 at 14:33 • 0 comments

We made some tweaks to the 3D design to allow the sipper device to mount onto rack-mounted vivarium cages. This will allow for higher-throughput experiments.
First validation!
Lex Kravitz • 08/15/2018 at 15:06 • 0 comments

Earlier this week we assembled a sipper device and filled one tube with water and the other with diluted (1:2) chocolate ensure. We placed it in a mouse cage overnight.

Some glamour shots of the device in a mouse cage:

The next morning, guess what?? One tube was completely empty... the other untouched

First data!
How much does this cost?
Lex Kravitz • 08/11/2018 at 21:37 • 0 comments

Not including the 3D parts, we calculate this at ~$85 per sipper. This can be $30 cheaper if you don't need the battery, or just use a cheaper battery. The $30 battery we chose was probably a bit overkill (6600mAh) but we had a bunch around the lab so we used them. We're also thinking ahead to putting WIFI on this device for data transfer and that will require more battery power. BOM in the files area as well.

View all 13 project logs

Build Instructions

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Download Arduino IDE

Before starting with building anything you should make sure your computer can communicate with the Adalogger M0 board and that you can flash sketches to it. This should reduce frustration later. Start by installing the Arduino IDE.

Install Arduino boards files to let the Arduino IDE flash the Adalogger M0

The Adafruit M0 Adalogger board is not natively supported by the Arduino IDE. Follow instructions here to install support for this board in the Arduino IDE. After completing these steps make sure you can flash the example sketch "Blink" to the Adalogger board before continuing. To do this, open the Blink example in File>Examples>Basic>Blink.

"Double-click" the small physical button on the Adalogger board to put it in bootloader mode, set Board to "Adafruit Feather M0" and port to the correct COM port and click upload (the right arrow at the top of the Arduino IDE). You should see "Upload complete" in the bottom feedback window and the red LED on the board should blink once per second.

Congratulations, you have configured your Arduino IDE and uploaded a sketch to the Adalogger!

Install relevant libraries

The Sipper device requires the following libraries:

#include <Adafruit_SSD1306.h>
#include <Wire.h>
#include <RTCZero.h>
#include <SPI.h>
#include <SdFat.h>
#include <Adafruit_GFX.h>
#include <TimeLib.h> //include the Arduino Time library
#include <stdio.h>  // include the C++ standard IO library

These are available for download as a single zip file from the files area, or you can search for them online. Download the zip file and extract into your Arduino/libraries directory. When you're done it should look something like this:

If this doesn't work, or you'd prefer to install libraries a different way there are instructions here for how to manually add libraries.

Discussions

Milán wrote 07/13/2020 at 17:21

Great project! Thank you for these directions!

I need help troubleshooting: Everything went well until I plugged in the battery. Nothing showed up on the screen at all, but there is a blinking red light and a blinking green light coming from the feather. Nothing appears on the screen when I press A, B, or C buttons, but the reset button pauses the light. I am pretty sure I soldered the wires into the right places according to the instructions given. Any suggestions?

Are you sure? yes | no

Meaghan Creed wrote 07/30/2020 at 03:08

Hi - what happens when you flash the time-setting code (SipCounter-SetClock)? Does it have a problem with the screen not showing anything after flashing that?

Are you sure? yes | no

Meaghan Creed wrote 07/30/2020 at 03:13

The blinking red and green lights suggests it could be an SD card error...(although usually the code would tell you that on the screen "Check SD Card!") You could ensure you're using the libraries here on the hackaday page.

Are you sure? yes | no

Taylor Woodward wrote 04/23/2020 at 11:10

I'm currently working on trying to implement these in our lab- have you had any issues with mice chewing on the plastic while they were housed continuously in the home cage? My animal care facility was wondering.

Are you sure? yes | no

Taylor Woodward wrote 07/27/2020 at 18:07

Follow up: I realized this was in the paper actually. In our experience they chew the hydropac valves a bit, but it wasn't insane especially if the epoxy was extended to the edge of the valve lip.

Are you sure? yes | no

Meaghan Creed wrote 07/30/2020 at 03:04

Thanks for the tip! While some mice are prone to chewing (we've observed this to be a trait of some individual mice), we've had the majority of mice in our study successfully drinking out of the same tubes for multiple consecutive weeks, without chewing or otherwise destroying the valves.

Are you sure? yes | no

jeph wrote 03/16/2020 at 17:02

really useful project. Im having trouble getting the sd card to work. all I get is "check sd card"
on the screen. all files were good all uploads are successful ? Please any help appreciated.

Are you sure? yes | no

Meaghan Creed wrote 07/30/2020 at 03:23

Hi - sorry for the delay. If you've had the issue with multiple SD cards, it could be an issue with the Adafruit SAMD Boards package, which you install in the Boards Manager. When Adafruit released version 1.5.6 something changed in how the Adalogger communicates with the SD card. You can work around it by downgrading your Adafruit SAMD Boards package to 1.5.5. To do this, go to the boards manager, find the "Adafruit SAMD Boards" package and click on the "Select version" drop down menu. Then choose 1.5.5 and install that. You should probably re-start the Arduino IDE after that, and then see if you can flash the code. Can you post back if that solves it?

This suggestion is from @Lex Kravitz, who confirmed that versions including 1.5.5 and below work with his code, while versions including 1.5.6 and above do not (Adafruit is on version 1.6.0 currently). He posted on the Adafruit forum about this but so far we haven't figured out why this is happening.

Are you sure? yes | no

bestk1 wrote 02/19/2021 at 15:52

Hi there, I'm also having this issue but I've triple checked that my Adafruit SAMD Boards package is version 1.5.5. and the unit is still presenting the "Check SD Card" error when I connect it to battery. It says that it's successfully flashing the programs to the Adafruit board, so do you have any other suggestions for resolving the "Check SD Card" error? I would love to get this to work because it seems like a really great behavioral apparatus!

Are you sure? yes | no

mwblab wrote 04/27/2019 at 01:46

Very cool project! I didn’t see this in the components list - what is the red part between the falcon tube and the supper valve?

Are you sure? yes | no

Lex Kravitz wrote 11/30/2019 at 22:24

Sorry for the delay - that was a little 3D printed ring we were using early on. It's not necessary so it's not in the components list. We found the best way to attach the valves to the sipper tube is hot glue - just melt it all around and push the valve into place!

Are you sure? yes | no

Duncan wrote 03/08/2019 at 10:41

This looks great. I am trying to build some but am having trouble getting the Hydropac valves in Europe. I'm wondering if you have tried other valves or know of something I could try as an alternative?

Are you sure? yes | no

dhuzard wrote 11/25/2019 at 12:30

Hi Duncan, did you find a solution to obtain the valves in europe ?

Are you sure? yes | no

Lex Kravitz wrote 11/30/2019 at 22:23

Unfortunately we don't know of a drop-in alternative. I would try to find a facility near you that uses Hydropac watering and see if they can give you some valves, they're only a few cents each if you can get them.

One valve idea that I thought was intriguing but didn't try to adapt were these:

https://www.amazon.com/Mtsooning-Chicken-Poultry-Nipple-Drinker/dp/B07CPSKSHJ/

If you find something that works please reply here with your experience!

Are you sure? yes | no

Sophi Kravitz wrote 02/15/2019 at 17:35

This was a featured project today on Hackaday.com, congrats!

Are you sure? yes | no

Automated mouse homecage two-bottle choice test v2

Details

Files

Sipper base.stl

Sipper cover.stl

Mini sipper tube holder.stl

SipCounter-100618stable.zip

Sipper_libraries_072719.zip

Components

Project Logs

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Mini tube holder!

Editable 3D design

Troubleshooting

Quick video

Rat v2.0 design coming soon!

Modification for rats!

TTL output when mouse interacts with sippers

Homecage validation!

First validation!

How much does this cost?

Build Instructions

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Discussions

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