Open Ephys GUI with Intan RHD2000 USB acq board

Evan Harrell

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Aug 24, 2015, 4:55:13 AM8/24/15

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Hi everyone,

I am trying to use the open ephys GUI with an Intan RHD2000 acquisition board and am having a problem.

As soon as I add the electrodes to the Spike detector module, the GUI crashes and gives a segmentation fault.

Rhythm FPGA updating settings.
Rhythm FPGA setting num outputs to 0
Bandpass Filter updating settings.
Spike Detector updating settings.
Adding electrode with 2 channels.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

In searching for a solution, I found this note under the Analog input section on the open ephys website. (https://open-ephys.atlassian.net/wiki/display/OEW/How+it+works)

"NOTE: The Intan RHD2000 Evaluation Board uses the AD7680 ADCs from Analog Devices. The control sequence for these chips is not directly compatible with the one used by the TI chips. Therefore, if you want to use the Open Ephys acquisition board with Intan's software (or Intan's board with the Open Ephys software), you'll have to exchange the default FPGA bitfile in order for the ADCs to work."

However, this is not mentioned in the neural data acquisition section. I presume that since the neural acquisition AD converters are on the Intan headstages, it should be compatible without any adjustments if I am just trying to add neural data acquisition channels. Can anyone help me with this?

Regards,
Evan Harrell

Aarón Cuevas

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Aug 24, 2015, 1:14:59 PM8/24/15

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Hi,

You're right in that the ADC compatibility issue is only related to the external ADC inputs and not the headstage data. From the looks of it, it seems as if the Rhythm node is not detecting any headstages and the spike detctor is crashing because of that. Could you please build a chain with only a Rhythm source node and a LFP viewer to check if that is the case?

If it's that, please send us the log lines produced when you insert the Rhythm processor. Although we've made some changes to both the firmware and the interface software over time to better suit our needs it should still be compatible with Intan's board, as the headstage interface is still the same, so it's something we'd need to look at. Also, please check if it works properly with Intan's software to discard any hardware issue.

Best,

Aarón.

Evan Harrell

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Aug 25, 2015, 5:30:18 AM8/25/15

to Aarón Cuevas, Open Ephys

Hi Aarón,

Thanks, you were right. The headstage was not snapped in properly. My cables seem to be able to pull it out very easily. I guess this is why they started selling the light weight cables. Anyways, it seems to work fine now.

For the future, could you point me in the direction of the correct bitfile for the ADCs to work? I see in the Intan Rhythm API there is one called main.bit. Could that be what I am looking for?

Best
Evan

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Aarón Cuevas

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Aug 27, 2015, 10:07:21 PM8/27/15

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Hi,

Yes, that would be the bitfile to be able to use Intan board's ADCs.

Best,

Aarón.

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Minggui Chen

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Nov 14, 2021, 10:33:53 AM11/14/21

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Hi,

We have a open ephys board (opal kelly 6010 version), and intended to perform chronic recordings on NHPs. I am wondeirng if it's possible to use Intan RHX software to acquire neural data and analog inputs. It would be awesome if it also works for other types of inputs, such as digital in/out and analog out. We want to use intan software, as it makes sense for us to set a RMS threshold on all channels everyday before acquisition. COuld you please guide me how to do that? Based on this thread, we need to switch bit files, right? Which bit file to use? Thanks. Appreciated.

Best,

Minggui

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Minggui Chen

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Nov 14, 2021, 11:01:42 AM11/14/21

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We installed the Intan RHX software, and all the neural and auxiliary channels from the headstages works normally. But we can't see any other channels, including analog channels that are absolutely required for us.

Josh Siegle

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Nov 15, 2021, 3:00:27 PM11/15/21

to Minggui Chen, Open Ephys

Hi Minggui,

Did you end up switching out any bitfiles? The Open Ephys acquisition board uses a different type of ADC than the RHD USB Interface board, so it’s expected that the analog channels will not function properly when using the bitfile that’s included with the software. It looks like the Intan bitfile is named “ConfigRHDInterfaceBoard.bit". You could try renaming the Open Ephys acquisition board’s "rhd2000_usb3.bit” file to match that and copying it into the Intan directory before launching the RHX software.

Do the digital inputs work as expected, or are those also not functional?

FWIW, we will be adding RMS-based thresholds to the Spike Detector in the next release of the Open Ephys GUI (expected before the end of the year).

Josh

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Minggui Chen

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Nov 16, 2021, 1:00:05 AM11/16/21

to Josh Siegle, Open Ephys

Thanks, Josh, for the advice. All non-headstage channels, including AI, AO, DIO, didn't work. Just renamed and replaced the bit files as what you mentioned; still the same in Intan software.

We actually prefer the official plugin-GUI to drive open ephys. It would be awesome if the RMS method could be added to both Spike Detector and Spike Sorter. I would also like to suggest two other features, if possible.

1) apply RMS or fixed voltage threshold to all channels,

2) lock the audio output to the selected channels with a mouse, say on the continuous signal plots or spike detector/sorter plots. It's much easier to make sense of stimulus selectivity by keeping the visual and audio consistent. In this way, what we say is basically what we get from the audio.