Commutators

If you work with cable-tethered freely-behaving animals then you'll have noticed that the cable soon becomes twisted as the animal roams around the behavioural arena, resulting in shortening of the free cable length and often the formation of twisted loops which can distract your behaving animal provoking cable attacks (trust us, it's very expensive to feed your animals cables!).

[Based on an original design by Sampath Kapanaiah and Dennis Kaetzel, "Open-MAC": https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2023.e00429]

Measuring in at 170 mm x 65 mm x 65 mm, the compact, low-profile design can be mounted to a fixed surface using the integrated screw-hole brackets or alternatively mounted with a clamp.

Suitable for freely-behaving animals as small as mice and more, our ultra-quiet motorised commutator senses cable rotation induced by animal motion and applies equal and opposite rotation in real-time (almost silently!), ensuring that your cable never becomes twisted.

The commutator supports three different modes:

(1) electrophysiology (up to 256 channels via a pair of SPI cables).

(2a) electrophysiology (128 channels via single SPI cable) and optogenetics (single or dual channel)

(2b) electrophysiology (128 channels via single SPI cable) and MiniScope imaging (via coax. cable)

The commutator can be runs via USB-C, for noise-free plug-n-play use with a variety of existing data-acquisition systems including OpenEphys, Intan, Neuralynx, Plexon and Tucker-Davies Technologies.