An interactive 24-channel event-logging system based on the AIM 65 single-board microcomputer.

Measures of the spontaneous behaviour of animals commonly involve the repetitive counting of behavioural events over successive periods of time following some experimental treatment. An automated event-logging system has been designed for such applications. The system is based on an AIM 65 microcomputer with 4 Kbytes of random-access memory and facilities for manual event-logging through the keyboard, or automatic logging via a signal-conditioning buffer, connected to the backplane connector of the computer. The control program is written in 6500 machine code and stored in an onboard, read-only, memory chip. The software generates a simple interactive dialogue for the selection of operating options which include manual or automatic modes, configuration of active channels, duration and number of logging cycles, and the choice of printed or transmitted output. The microcomputer can also be instructed to pause and then to restart, to print out its current status, or to abort. The system has been used over a period of 18 months in numerous experiments in this laboratory, and has proved to be reliable, accurate and entirely suited to its application.