Using MultiClamp Soft Panel with ACQ4

[Penn Lab]

Hi there, 

Has anyone got any experience using the Multiclamp Soft Panel with ACQ4? Has recent development with ACQ4 had the Soft Panel in mind? I realise that ACQ4 is designed to control many features of the Multiclamp via the Multiclamp Commander API (e.g. clamp mode, holding potential etc) but certain adjustments (e.g. bridge balance etc.) would be much more convenient to make via the soft panel.

I tried using the soft panel the other week operationg ACQ4 on windows but had some very erratic behaviour (e.g. not switching clamp mode and asynchronization between ACQ4 and Multiclamp settings). I can follow this up with more testing but want to update our ACQ4 version now that we have finished a bunch of projects and are about to receive a new computer; our ACQ4 version is very old, from 2016 and is 32-bit (and uses the 32-bit Multiclamp commander). 

In the mean time, I would be happy to hear of peoples experiences using the soft panel with (more recent, and 64-bit) versions of ACQ4 and Multiclamp commander.

https://www.moleculardevices.com/sites/default/files/en/assets/data-sheets/dd/cns/softpanel-controller.pdf

https://www.moleculardevices.com/products/axon-patch-clamp-system/accessories-consumables/soft-panel-amplifier-control 

All the best

Andy Penn

[Luke Campagnola]

Hi Andy,

I have not used a Soft Panel or heard of anyone else attempting this, but I'd love to hear more about your experience.

There are a few ways in which the commander API is limited that make it difficult to do this kind of shared control. For example, there is no way to be informed of changes to the bridge balance value, which means we either have to poll this value repeatedly (which is actually quite slow) or control it entirely from acq4. Another issue is that acq4 sends holding commands via the DAQ (we can't use the MC's built-in holding values for reasons I'll skip over here), and since the command signal is shared between VC and IC, this means that if you use the soft panel to switch clamp modes, then the wrong holding value will be sent until acq4 has been informed that the mode has changed. 

I am actually curious whether we could have acq4 interact directly with the soft panel? In my lab we use these programmable keyboards to get quick access to various functions, and it does dramatically improve the ease of patching having this physical interface. I can definitely see the utility of having those knobs for setting bridge balance and compensation parameters. Perhaps something like this one would work for that?

In any case, I think there is likely to be a relatively easy solution to making the soft panel work with acq4 via commander, as long as you are aware of the limitations of this interaction.

Luke

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Subject: [acq4] Using MultiClamp Soft Panel with ACQ4

 

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