Poke Registration and Pellet Dispensing

[Elizabeth Brouns]

Hello everyone,

I have run into an issue with one of my lab's FED3 devices, in which no pokes will register and it will not dispense any pellets. I run all devices on an identical protocol with identical scripts, and every device works great except this one. I used it for several months without any issue, but after taking a several week break on this protocol, I came back to find that the device no longer functioned as it did. I assume something happened to it during that time, but I am unsure what exactly happened and how to fix it.

There are a few things on the device that I know work:

- I can load new scripts onto the device (I assume this works because the new script's file name will display on the device)

- The device will create .csv files as it is supposed to

- One of the scripts I use involves automatic pellet delivery after 4 minutes have elapsed and the nose poke lights will turn off when the pellet is dispensed, turning on again once the mouse retrieves the pellet. The lights can and do turn off after 4 minutes.

However, no pokes are registered on the device and the lights will not respond to any pokes, nor will any pellets be dispensed regardless of if it dispensed automatically on a schedule or as a response to an FR1 task. 

Things I have tried:

- Cleaning all the sensors (both pellet and nose poke). I have used both pressurized air and 70% ethanol on a cotton swab to clean all the devices, including this one

- Examined the pellet dispenser, checking for any jams. I never found any, and the device has never done the jam clearing function.

I will say that I have never taken the device apart (mostly out of fear of making anything worse and having to take the device permanently out of commission), but I will if necessary. If anyone has any recommendations on how to fix these issues, I would really appreciate it. Thank you in advance!

Best,

Elizabeth

[Lex]

Hi Elizabeth,

Thanks for the detailed report!  Is there any chance you re-flashed the device between it working and then not working?  Your issue seems very similar to this post from Sam Walker, we never got to the bottom of what happened with him but maybe we can ping him again on that thread and see if he's figured it out. 

One thing you could try in the meantime is to disable sleep, in case there's an issue there.  I would try that on this device and see if that helps - even if it doesn't that would be useful to know.  To disable sleep, include fed3.disableSleep(); right after fed3.begin(); in the void setup() loop, and then reflash the device.  ie:

void setup() {
  fed3.begin();                                    //Setup the FED3 hardware

  fed3.disableSleep();                             //disable sleep
}

Best,

-Lex

-Lex

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[Samuel Walker]

Hi Lex and Elizabeth,

Indeed, something like this happened to all of my FED3s after a few months of not using them. My issue was that the FED3 would initially work fine, but after some hours it would just stop responding, and the clock on the FED3 screen would stop, such that you could see the exact time that it "froze" - not sure if this is what happens to yours.
I never got to the bottom of what was causing it, but disabling sleep solved the issue. So, because disabling sleep eats up power faster (4-5 days for me), I just bought a heap of batteries and USB chargers as described in this post, and switch out the batteries as needed.

Sam

[Elizabeth Brouns]

Hi Lex and Sam,

Thanks so much for the advice! I already use fed3.disableSleep() in my setup loop on all of my scripts already and unfortunately it hasn't made any difference. I don't know if it is a matter of the device not responding after a certain amount of time since it will not register any pokes or execute any functions other than the lights even immediately after turning the device on.

The point about the clock freezing is very interesting. The date and time do display properly on my device (although the clock is about 2 minutes behind for some reason). I know there are ways for me to fix that issue, but I have a feeling that small tidbit is unrelated to the larger issue.

I'll keep my eye out for any other posts that could have something to do with my issue, but thank you both for your help so far!

Best,

Elizabeth

[Julia Pai]

Hey Elizabeth,

I know this is an old post, but I was having similar issues on some devices where they would stop registering inputs and I couldn't figure out why. I found that a least for my case, the common issue was that the pellet sensor gets gunked up, so that the FED3 still thinks there is a pellet in the well -- hence it still detecting pokes and logging, but not responding to any inputs. I was also cleaning with pressurized air and alcohol, but sometimes this ends up actually pushing pellet grime further into the sensor. I found that scraping out the sensor area with fine foreceps and pulling out some of the grime rescued some of the mysteriously frozen FEDs.

I actually came on here to see if anyone had found a better way of cleaning out the pellet sensor area. Not sure if this is the same root cause as your issue but hopefully this advice could help some other people.