Wirefree questions

[Drago Guggiana-Nilo]

Dear y'all,

We're trying to set up the wirefree V3 as part of our mouse pipeline, and I had a couple of questions I hope you can help me with :)

1) I went through the group's messages, and it sounds like the best way of syncing the mini acquisition to other devices is to record the frame where the start LED turns on, map that to whatever timebase the camera is in, and then go with the timestamps on each mini frame. Have there been any updates on this? In particular, in the case of dropped frames, I should be able to see this in the timestamps right? (i.e. a longer interval between the surrounding frames)

2) There is also mention about the IR receiver in the V3 (I think also from the workshop last November). Did y'all make any more pushes on this regard or are efforts focused on the wirefree V4 (mouse version) for the most part?

3) From the above, do you have any estimate of availability for the mouse wirefree V4? 

As you can probs imagine, I'm trying to plan/distribute my efforts, so any info on the above will be super helpful in deciding what to go for. Thanks a ton in advance (and already for all of these awesome tools)

Best,

Drago

[Daniel Aharoni]

Hi!

1) This is still probably the easiest way of doing things. And yes, if a frame gets dropped it will show up in the timestamps and shouldn't be an issue. As long as you use the timestamps associated with each frame, and don't just interpolate the timing, you won't have to worry about dropped frames.

2) The IR receiver is fully implemented in the V4 wire-free Miniscope which is almost ready to be released. There is indeed an IR receiver on the V3 wire-free but we never got around to implementing it in firmware. It would be possible to add this functionality but would requires some c++ MCU programming.

3) Hmm, hopefully will have everything released within a couple months from now. The global supply shortage of electronics has really slowed progress and likely could be a bottle neck for broad dissemination until supply chain issues improve.

[Drago Guggiana-Nilo]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks much for the info, this is very helpful. We'll continue rolling with the V3 wirefree (with the LED turn on sync method) for now and then update the pipeline once the V4 wirefree rolls out. 

Best,

Drago