mouse package¶
Mouse Record package, a cheap, modular, behavior recording program
Overview¶
The Mouse Record package is designed for the ease of recording and
singling out desired behavior of rodents, namely the events of interest in
reward-stimulus studies. Using these events as triggers (e.g., the press
of a lever), the program records the user-specified time before and after
a desired event. In addition to its primary recording feature, the package
contains two auxiliary programs that provide a preview of the camera and take a
photo of the background for ease of setup purposes. Additionally, the package
operates on a Raspberry Pi-based system, providing a cheaper alternative than
conventional recording apparatus used in behavioral studies.
Standard Install¶
To install, use standard python installation procedure:
python setup.py install
Additionally, the program requires installation of _setuptools
Development¶
Installing¶
Enter the following into the terminal to install the program:
git clone https://github.com/DudLab/mouse_record
cd mouse_record
python setup.py develop
Updating¶
To update the program, first specify the directory to where the mouse_record
file is saved to. Then, enter the git pull command. An example is provided
as follows:
git pull
This will ensure that the software is up-to-date.
Uninstalling¶
Enter the following into the terminal to install the program:
python setup.py develop --uninstall
Testing¶
When testing the program, the user should move to the directory to where
the mouse_record file is located. Then enter the following command:
python setup.py test
Documentation¶
Documentation can be built from source on any platform easily. Just run the following command.
python setup.py build_sphinx
This will generate HTML documentation, which can be open using this file
build/sphinx/html/index.html in the current directory.
For more build options, simply run the following command.
python setup.py build_sphinx --help
Other build targets can be specified using the -b or --builder option.
Beyond the standard options that Sphinx provides, we add the pdf option.
Alternatively, if one does not wish to use setup.py, one can use a Makefile
or make.bat on Windows in the docs/ directory to generate
documentation. To do this enter the docs/ directory. A number of different
formats can be used. However, the design target is HTML. To build the HTML
docs, enter the following command.
make html
Then, open the file _build/html/index.html within the docs/ directory.
A list of other build targets is provided by running the following command.
make help
If you wish to clean all of the generated documentation, simply run the following command.
make clean
Cleaning¶
To clean up all build products, one can use the clean option. This will
eliminate all intermediates used to build. This has been amended to include
picking up documentation build intermediates. The syntax is shown below.
python setup.py clean
If this is not sufficient, and one wishes to eliminate the final products, as
well. This can be done with the flag -a or --all. This adjustment to
the syntax is shown below.
python setup.py clean --all
Usage¶
Picture Usage¶
Execution of the program consists of the program name and a single argument, the directory in which the picture is to be saved into.
mouse-picture ~/Destkop
Preview Usage¶
Execution of the program consists of the program name and a single argument:
the time desired length of the camera preview (in seconds).
Additionally, the user can exit at any time by entering Ctrl + c
mouse-preview 60
Record Usage¶
Execution of the program consists of the program name and respectve arguments:
time to record before trigger event (in seconds), time to record after
(in seconds), and directory of the file to be saved into. By default, this uses
GPIO port 27. However, a different one could be selected using the -p
or --port option to specify it.
An example is shown below:
sudo mouse-record 2 2 /home/pi/Desktop
Also, as mentioned before, the program will end when a ``KeyboardInterrupt``(Ctrl + c) is entered into the terminal.