Lickometer + reward delivery

What you'll need

Here is a parts list I may update this periodically if things go out of stock, but feel free to e-mail me if you have questions for suitable replacement items!

Lickometer parts

Step-by-step instructions

1. Assemble your Arduino and Tinkerkit shield

Align the Tinkerkit shield on top of the Arduino Uno board and push down until the pins of the shield are fully inserted.

Connect a jumper wire from the "Gnd" (Ground) pin on the Arduino to one of the + or - columns on your breadboard. The pins are electrically coupled by column in the + or - sections (groups of 5), and by row in the center of the board (e.g. 1f-1j are coupled). In this example, I've plugged it into the second group in the - column.

2. Hook up your transistor to the power supply, Arduino 5V TTL, and solenoid

Your 12V power supply is going to be used with your solenoid. Leave the power supply unplugged :)

Cut off the plug part of the power supply.

Using a wire stripper, remove ~0.5-1.0 cm off of the ends of the black and red wires.

Insert your transistor into the breadboard so that each pin is in a different row. Connect a jumper wire from the "E" pin of the transistor to the column group containing your Arduino Grnd wire. For these transistors, when you are looking at the transistor with the notch facing towards you, the three pins correspond to "B, C, and E" from left to right.

Now connect a jumper wire from one of the digital out pins on the Arduino (I used pin 10) to the "B" pin of the transistor.

Connect the black wire from your power supply to the "E" transistor pin, and one of the solenoid wires to the "C" transistor pin. Connect the other solenoid wire to the red wire from the power supply in an empty row on your breadboard. I like to hold them in place with the cut off end of a jumper wire.

Now to test whether it's working, plug in your power supply to the wall, and insert one end of a jumper wire into the row containing the "C" transistor pin.

Take the other end of the jumper wire and briefly connect it into the row containing the "B" transistor pin. You should hear the solenoid click open/closed as you make the connection.

3. Solder some copper wire to the Tinkerkit capacitor sensor (optional)

If you have a soldering iron, solder two copper wires to the capacitor sensor. Some people in my lab just like to wrap the ends of the wire through the holes.

Make sure the wires are long enough to reach your Arduino board. Depends how close you will have your behavioral set up/feeding tube to your Arduino.

4. Heatshrink the copper wire to the animal feeding tube

Strip about an inch or so off the end of the copper wire soldered to the "S" part of the board. Wrap the wire around the animal feeding tube.

Place a piece of heat shrink around the animal feeding tube/copper that's slightly bigger than the end of the tube.

Use a heat gun to get the heat shrink in a tight fit around the feeding tube. You can add some extra rubber insulation around it to shield the tube if you want.

5. Plug the capacitive sensor into the Tinkerkit shield

Use one of the Tinkerkit cables to connect the capacitor sensor to one of the Inputs on the shield (I used I0). Plug in the copper wire soldered to the "G" part of the capacitor sensor into the - column that's coupled to your Arduino ground.

IMG_1393.MOV

Test it out! When you touch the end of the feeding tube (or anywhere along the feeding needle/copper wire if you didn't add extra insulation), you should see the yellow light on the board light up. To reset the capacitor sensor baseline value, just unplug/replug the Tinkerkit cable going into the Input I0.

6. Assemble tubing and syringe

Put in the male slip leur to 1/16" barb tubing adapter into the end of the feeding tube.

Screw in the 10-32 UNF to 1/16" barb tubing adapters into the solenoid ports. I like to screw them in directly through the teflon.

Connect the "in" port of the solenoid to your 20+ mL syringe using 1/16" ID tubing, and then connect the "out" port of the solenoid to the animal feeding needle. The water delivery is gravity-based, so depending on how high up your mount your syringe (and how full the syringe is), your water droplet sizes may vary. Find the volume/height that works for you and keep it roughly consistent!

If you ever find the lickometer gets "stuck" open, you can reset the sensor by unplugging/replugging the I0 cable at the board. Once you have your behavioral setup/things locked in place, I generally don't have any problems.

I also like to plug the solenoid power supply into plug with the power switch (on the parts list), so that it's easy to switch off in case of a problem!

7. Upload an example Arduino script to test whether it will deliver water whenever the mouse touches the end of the lickspout.

I uploaded an example script and instructions for downloading/setting up the Arduino here on my github page!

https://github.com/kimck/Arduino-lickometer

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