This lickometer was designed to measure drinking behavior while also allowing for controlled access to water. Access to the water was the first requirement and then feedback on how much the mouse drank was required. The devie had to mounted to the standard cage wall and accept standard water feeder vials.

Again, with the use of a microntroller based solution we could control the access flap to the water and also monitor the mouse's tongue activity via Infrared sensors.  This lickometer is designed to allow for up to eight channels at a time to be connected and controlled synchronously for a multi-cage experiement.

In addition to this all of the scheduling and timing is done via a custom program on the computer that records the signals from the micocontroller and interpreting from each of the lickometers. These signals are timestamped and written to a CSV file for storage

This program also handles the schedule for when to open and close the servo controlled doors. By managing all timekeeping on the computer this ensures that everything is based on the same cycles, and since it is a network attached real time clock there is no time drift.

Standard USB cables connect the control board to the 8 lickometers. 

Aside from the eight channels for the lickometers there are an additional two TTL Breakouts for connecting to devices like the Neurophotometrics FP3002 system.

This allows for the centralized and synchronized scheduling of all events.