What is MiceCraft ?

The goal of MiceCraft is to let researchers and animal facilities create rich behavior experiments.

for scientists:

• MiceCraft is flexible: you create your own experiment, hardware and protocol, without concession.
• You have full control of the running protocol.

MiceCraft is ethic, welfare, safety of animals.

MiceCraft first aim is to push forward animal study in an ethic way. MiceCraft is ethic because of those points:

• MiceCraft provides devices that let animals live in group and get to their test voluntarily.
• MiceCraft experiment reduces animal handling by human, making the animals less stressed.
• MiceCraft runs 24/7: Main activity of rodents is by night, so they can get to test area when it's best time for them.
• MiceCraft blocks have a roof: the animals are not scared to be catch by a human while the experiment is running.
• MiceCraft encourage not using water or food restriction in the protocols: we try to publish equivalent of existing experiment to show this is not needed.
• MiceCraft provides live interface for monitoring experiments, and live report to watch complete results to read results and improve experiment protocols.
• MiceCraft display layer let you create screens showing live experiments running in any place: office, animal facility, boss' office, building hall so that everybody can see experiments running increasing transparency and discussions over protocols.
• MiceCraft protocols are coded in python. Hardware is open. Therefore replicating an experiment is really possible.
• A lot of labs are dealing with all the hardware/software problems. MiceCraft is designed to respond to all basic tasks that a behaviorist would need by bringing software and hardware that is always needed, letting scientists focus on their own specific devices that they need to study.
• Get the maximum amount of data per experiment, making each animal tested meaningful in term of data.

MiceCraft also brings:

• Speed & efficiency:
• Imagination
• Fiber
• Housing condition Home cage monitoring
• Without punishment
• Phase Auto
• Low Cost / disseminable * Scaling: Replicate

MiceCraft is designed to ease the creation of experiments from the hardware and software side. Currently,

The MiceCraft eco-system

The goal of MiceCraft is to provided everything you need to create, control, monitor and analyze your rodent experiments. Live.

MiceCraft:

• Create your experiment
• Test it
• Print it
• Monitor
• Control
• Analyse

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/996a2efa-cfd9-4ce0-a20c-057b2868a2fa

An example of a MiceCraft experiment.

• Top: schematic view of the experiment. In this interface you can watch the current location of mice, see current state of devices, use control to create manual actions, see live results.
• Bottom view:

Devices included in MiceCraft

Here is the list of devices supported by MiceCraft:

Device name	Description
Device: Fed 3	The original Fed 3 device to deliver pellets with 2 nose pokes
Device: Lever	Lever press device
Device: Light	Simple lightning module with 3 leds
Device: Gate	Sorts the animals in the experiment. Allow access to animals to specific area, limit number of animals.
Device: Room Sensor	Reads temperature, humidity, light, shocks, noise level of the environment
Device: Touch Screen	Touch screen device
Device: Water Pump	Provide water/sugar+water/liquids. Can flush delivery.
Device: TTL	Sends TTL signals via Arduino
Your device	See Create your own MiceCraft device section

Software included in MiceCraft

Category	Name (ClassName)	Description
Helpers	Website	Manage the creation of online reports to expose your results.
Network	ftpUploader	Uploads website to your servers.
Alarm	[Alarm]] ](/fdechaumont/micecraft/wiki/Manage-device-failure-&-recovery.-Sends-emails-and-provides-visual-display-through-[[Alarm:-Visual-display)
Graphics	Alarm: Visual display	Graphics user interface for alarms
Results	MiniStats	Statistics dedicated to behavior analysis
Results	LogAnalyser	Parse exeperiments log to produce results
Report	LogAnalyser	Get the number of missed reading in gates

Extends with your device

MiceCraft handles everything you don't want to deal with like the Gates, the alarms (...). Now you want to plug you super-specific device from your lab into MiceCraft so that everythings runs together. That's quite simple ! Look at the Create your own MiceCraft device section. Then, if you want to advertise you MiceCraft device and make it popular, I will be happy to add it in the list.

Experiment examples

• exp1
• exp2

Setting up an experiment

Creating your protocol

Creating your visual monitoring interface

Creating your analysis pipeline

The MiceCraft-Reports let you create reports on you experiments.