Air puff

Bowey

Hi Josh,

I wonder if there's a way to deliver air puff via the solenoid valve controlled by Bpod? If so, what will be the parameter fit for this purpose?

Best,
Bowen

Josh

Hi Bowen,

Our solenoid valves (from The Lee Company, here) can gate pressurized air. The standard setup is to use a flow meter (e.g. this) to regulate the flow to 1 liter per minute into the top port of the valve. Next, remove the sleeve from the bottom valve port - this will be your exhaust. By default, the flow will go to exhaust, but then the valve is energized, flow will switch to the middle port, which you'd route to the experimental chamber.

-Josh

stan94

Josh
Hi Josh, we are also using solenoid valve to control the air flow. Since the Behavior port has been used by other valves in our system, we decide to use Bnc Out. However, after we connected the valve to this channel and turned on the BncOut in the Bpod console, nothing happened (as we were just testing by blowing the air to the top port and see if anything shows up to the middle port). We've also tried to switch the coil connection just in case it's wrong. Can you please help us?

Best,
Songyuan

Bowey

Josh wrote[quote='Josh' pid='1209' dateline='1570473534']
Hi Bowen,

Our solenoid valves (from The Lee Company, here) can gate pressurized air. The standard setup is to use a flow meter (e.g. this) to regulate the flow to 1 liter per minute into the top port of the valve. Next, remove the sleeve from the bottom valve port - this will be your exhaust. By default, the flow will go to exhaust, but then the valve is energized, flow will switch to the middle port, which you'd route to the experimental chamber.

-Josh

Thank you Josh!

Josh

Hello Songyuan,

The BNC output channels supply 5V, and a nominal amount of current to drive logic gates and optoisolators. To drive a solenoid valve, you need 12V and much higher current. You also need components to protect the circuitry from reverse voltage spikes on turning off the inductive load.

If you've used all of the valve driver channels (one per behavior port) you can add additional valves with the valve driver module. Each module adds control for 8 valves.

Josh

stan94

Josh
Thank you Josh. Do you have any protection components to recommend?

Songyuan

Josh

That would depend on your drive circuit. Do you have a schematic?

stan94

Josh
Hi Josh, we don't have an existing schematic yet, but our circuit is quiet simple. It's a Bpod r2.5 (right now) connected to a Port Interface board through behavior port 1, this board is connected to a dispenser valve from another company. Other behavior ports are free right now.

Another thing I just encountered is, we were trying to use behavior port 2 with our air puff solenoid valve through a ethernet cable. However, there are 4 pairs at the end of the cable. When I was testing to connect one pair of them to the valve, the whole Bpod just got shut down and cannot be turned on even after unplugging and replugging. Do you know what might happened?