Description

ClockLab Chamber Control is a stand-alone program for controlling and recording from light-tight Circadian Cabinets made by Phenome Technologies. The program monitors light levels, temperature and humidity sensors built in the cabinets, and will control lights, temperature and feeding schedules according to user-specified schedules.

• Light control with continuously adjustable level, waveform and period
• Temperature control with continuously adjustable level, waveform and period
• Feeder control with user-settable schedules for Phenome Technologies’ programmable pellet feeders
• Continuous monitoring of temperature, humidity and light levels. Light levels can be overlayed on actograms.
• Send email alerts when temperature or other parameters exceed settable limits

ClockLab Light Control

ClockLab Chamber Control Light Schedules

The intensity of the LED lights inside of the Phenome Technologies circadian chambers can be varied from 0 to their maximum. The schedules for the lights in each chamber can be set independently. In this chamber (selector at top left) the lights are ramped up over the course of two hours starting at 6:00 AM, and then ramped down again starting at 4:00 PM.

• The schedule is adjusted by grabbing and dragging the cursors or line segments.
• New cursors can be added and deleted for infinitely flexible schedules with multiple phases.
• The duration of the schedule can be set to non-24-hour periods (Period control, bottom center).
• Here, a single schedule is being repeated for each day. Multiple waveforms can be set, with each one used for one day and then discarded (not shown). The schedule can be set in advance and programmed to start at a later time.

Chamber Monitoring

Below is a screen-shot from ClockLab Chamber Control monitoring a system with 12 light-tight cabinets. The status of 6 cabinets is shown at the left, with current temperature, humidity, and light level. The last 7 days of data are shown in the graphs at the right, with temperature and humidity above, and light levels below. The light levels are cycling on a a daily schedule set by the user.

ClockLab Feeder Control

Programmable Feeders and ClockLab Chamber Control

The Phenome Technologies low-profile programmable feeders (right) drop feed pellets on software command. ClockLab controls when a pellet is dropped, checks that the pellet has dropped properly, and records when the pellet is taken by the animal, as reported by sensors in the pellet path.

In the ClockLab Analysis folder, the activity data and feeder data can be overlayed (left). The feeder data can also be read into the analysis program as a stand-alone activity record, and all the standard measures, such Activity Profiles and Actograms, can be viewed and analyzed.

Below is the window for creating the feeder schedule. Dragging the yellow cursors or the green lines change the start and end time of the epochs of the schedule, and the maximum number of pellets that can be delivered during the epoch. This is a simple schedule with three epochs, one of which makes up to 20 pellets available between 6 AM and 6 PM. Additional epochs can be created and adjusted simply by right-clicking the graph and selecting Add Cursor from the popup menu that appears. The schedule can also be edited by typing values into the table at the bottom left of the window.