This week, the group began working on the subcomponents of the project. Evan obtained a joystick and created a MATLAB script that reads the x- and y-potential analog outputs of the joystick and displays their positions in real-time until the program is stopped. Due to COVID protocols, Anish was not able to go into the lab to collect additional measurements needed for developing a joystick shaft that can be applied upon the circuit piece. Jon contacted Harvard Apparatus and found that the footswitch of the syringe pump can receive 0V or 5V pulses from an external script to turn on and off diffusion of the reward. The metrics can be preset of the pump itself (flow rate, etc.) and a script can be developed to simply turn on/off the device.
One of the issues with the joystick software was the connectivity via a breadboard. When the joystick was initially connected to a breadboard, then to the Arduino, a significant amount of noise was recorded. When connected directly, however, this noise was eliminated. Further research must be performed next week to understand this discrepancy as a breadboard will be essential to connect the pump and the joystick into a singular system.