Miniscope V4 Coaxial Cable Tangling During Recordings

[Shion Yuki]

Hi all,

I noticed that the Miniscope V4 coaxial cable tends to get tangled during behavioral and neural recordings in freely moving animals. By the end of the 10-minute session, the animal was even starting to be lifted up because of the cable tension. Since I’m planning to use three chambers and run longer recordings in the future, I’m hoping to find a good solution for this issue.

Thank you!

Shion

[Daniel Aharoni]

Hi Shion,

There are now quite a few good commutator solutions for the Miniscope. I would highly suggest checking out OEPS's no-torque commutator (https://open-ephys.org/commutators/coaxial-commutator) as I have only heard great things about it. LabMaker also sells a commutator that should work, https://www.labmaker.org/products/open-mac-commutator.

We have also used a range of passive commutators in the past from DragonFly (I don't think they sell them anymore) and some DIY options.

[Shion Yuki]

Hi Daniel! 

Thank you so much for your reply. We ended up buying the Torque-free Commutator - Coaxial (https://open-ephys.org/commutators/coaxial-commutator) from OpenEphys. The coaxial cable does not get tangled, even during longer recordings. For the setup, I connect the webcam, miniscope, and commutator to my laptop via USB ports. The configuration is shown in the diagram below. The arrow only shows my guess of how signals are transduced. 

However, we have encountered another issue: the commutator and miniscope do not work in parallel. When the commutator automatically adjusts the cable, the miniscope is not recording, and vice versa. We have confirmed that both the commutator and miniscope are connected to the laptop and have power. I can adjust the commutator manually by pressing the buttons on the commutator while recording with the miniscope, but not automatically. I suspect the miniscope and commutator software are competing for signals (sorry, I am not familiar with engineering terms) and cannot receive and send signals in parallel. The webcam is working, so I can record the behavior of mice while either recording neural activity via the miniscope or adjusting the cable with the commutator. I guess this issue can be solved by adjusting the miniscope configuration file or the commutator software settings. If you have any ideas on how to solve this, I would appreciate it if you let me know.

I appreciate your support.

Best regards,

Shion

[Daniel Aharoni]

Thanks for all the information. So I'm 99.9% sure the issue is you are running 2 pieces of software that both need to control the Miniscope Data connection... and only one can do that at a time. The OEPS commutator uses the Miniscope's on board head orientation sensor data to rotate which is embedded in the imaging data stream. Long story short, to us the commutator in it auto tracking mode you will need to use bonsai to control and record with the Miniscope too. Jon Newman has developed a Bonsai plugin for Miniscopes and it should work well for you needs. Hope this info helps.

[Shion Yuki]

Hi Daniel!

Thank you so much for your reply! We ended up buying OEPS's no-torque commutator (https://open-ephys.org/commutators/coaxial-commutator) as you recommended. The commutator works great - it automatically adjusts the cable, and the coaxial cable no longer gets tangled, even during longer recordings.

However, we have encountered another issue - the commutator and V4 miniscope do not work in parallel: when the commutator is active, the miniscope cannot collect data, and vice versa. As shown in the diagram, we currently connect the miniscope and commutator to our laptop via DAQ, and a webcam to record mouse behavior. I suspect the commutator and miniscope are competing for device registration, so they cannot operate simultaneously unless the configuration file in the miniscope software or the registration in the commutator software is adjusted. I can still adjust the commutator manually while collecting data from the miniscope.

Do you have any ideas on how to do both in parallel so that we can collect miniscope data during long behavioral recordings?

I would appreciate any input!

Best regards,
Shion

On Tuesday, February 17, 2026 at 4:14:13 PM UTC-5 dbah...@gmail.com wrote: