ROBucket - operant chamber
Devarakonda et al. (2016) have developed the Rodent Operant Bucket (ROBucket), an low-cost open-source operant chamber, based on a Arduino microcontroller platform. The operant box can e.g. be used to train mice to respond for sucrose solution or other liquid reinforcers. As designed, the apparatus contains two nose pokes, a drinking well, and a solenoid-controlled liquid delivery system. ROBucket can run fixed ratio and progressive ratio training schedules, and can be programmed to run more complicated behavioral paradigms. Additional features such as motion sensing and video tracking can be added to the operant chamber through the array of widely available Arduino-compatible sensors.
Citation: Devarakonda, K., K. P. Nguyen, and A. V. Kravitz. 2016. ROBucket: A low cost operant chamber based on the Arduino microcontroller. Behavior Research Methods 48:503-509.
Files: Design files can be found on the authors’ website, the used code is provided as Supplementary Material of the article given above. [Vienna Scientific Instruments is not responsible for the content of external links. ]
Please get in contact if you need any help setting-up this versatile, open source operant chamber or if you are interested to adapt the design to your requirements.