<10 FPS in Camera and Miniscope with Commutator

[Shion Yuki]

Hi everyone!

We have successfully set up the commutator (openephys) and bonsai, and now we can collect neural activity data while recording animals' behavior. 

However, one issue has come up. We have noticed that while the Bonsai file specifies 20 FPS for the miniscope and 30 FPS for the external camera for behavioral recording, the actual data is much slower, usually below 10 FPS. We learned this from Bonsai's timestamp file. I am sending our Bonsai file and a diagram of the setup. We think it is a hardware issue (could be a laptop, cable, or commutator...) that adds delay to data acquisition, but what do you think? I would appreciate any input on the issue. 

Best regards,

Shion

[Daniel Aharoni]

Hi Shion,

From the Miniscope side of things, the V4 Miniscope plus open ephys commutator should always stream out stable FPS... the hardware really isn't even capable of generating output FPS that are variable. This sounds like a Bonsai config and/or USB bus bandwidth issue. I would suggest reaching out to Oprn Ephys since they are the ones that wrote and maintain the Miniscope bonsai plugin.

Question for you, if you connect everything like you have it now but instead of using Bonsai you just stream in and record both the GoPro and Miniscipe videos, do you get stable and higher FPS?

Daniel B. Aharoni, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Neurology, UCLA
Eleanor Leslie Chair in Innovative Brain Research
DAha...@mednet.ucla.edu
DBAh...@gmail.com

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[Florian S]

Hi Shion,

 

I had huge troubles with roughly 30-50% frame loss with the bonsai workflow and that commutator. So much so that I decided to program a script that allows the commutator to run with the normal miniscope software (taking the head movement from the file created by the miniscope software). If that helps and you are interested let me know, I can clean it up a bit and upload it here.

Cheers, 

Florian

[Shion Yuki]

Hi Daniel, 

Thank you for your comment. I will try to run the same setup with the Miniscope software and share the outcome! 

Best regards, 

Shion