Hi!
I require your help regarding a problem I’m encountering.
Here’s the project. I’d like to apply a proximity sensor to estimate the activity of a rats or mice in (Multiple) cages, and have that information bluetooth to a laptop nearby. Is there someone who might be able to tell me what I need to buy? Also, what type of software on the laptop will be needed to acquire the data? Ideally, Li ion battery powered, and as inexpensive as possible.
Thanks in advance!
Sort of like this? They use a camera and tracking software it seems. You need the mice or rat to be a constrasting color to the background. Don’t know what “off the shelf” software can do this, sorry.
Thanks for the suggestion. I’m trying to avoid cameras - I really just want gross activity - thus the proximity sensor. the whole thing needs to fit on top of a cage. I know that I can figure it out through trial and error (and a few electrical fires) but thought somebody would just know off the top of their head.
There is a completely ready-made solution for tasks such as yours.
The Beeptoolkit platform recognizes the colors and shades that you specify during the calibration process.
To do this, you need a high-resolution COM video camera; IR illumination is also possible if everything happens in a dark room.
You can also designate a specific reaction zone for the presence of rats in relation to another object.
Here is an example of how 3 colors are recognized.
Look up how PIR sensors work perhaps?
By tracking activities I guess you mean,
Know when the animal drinks water or eat food or sleep?
I guess you could use proximity IR sensors placed at strategic spots in the cage. An Arduino or a microprocessor could easily count the number of time a sensor was triggered or even record the length to which the sensor was active.
I’m sure this would be inexpensive since it requires only a Microprocessor and few IR sensors.
For the program/code, there are plenty of information about IR sensor and even a library for Arduino.
Just make sure you know a bit about variable to increment the count or how to use a timer function.
thanks all. I’ve been looking at the PIR sensors and they’re perfect for what I want to do. I don’t need to distinguish between behaviors - just any motion to be recorded. I just don’t know how to get them to speak to the laptop via bluetooth.
If you need to receive real-time data on a PC in a convenient form, you will need to resolve the issue of communication and converting the read data into metric values.
It would be interesting to see the complete algorithm, and not a separate part of it, because solving one problem, you encounter others.
