This project involves the development of a serial communications library and Graphical User Interface for a resizable arena for walking insects.   It was developed for the laboratory of Michael Reiser at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Farm Research Campus (JFRC). The motivation was to build a resizable arena to 'herd' walking flies towards any given point within the bounds delimited by the rails.  

The mechanics of the arena were designed in-house at JFRC, whereas we focused on developing the hardware and control software.  We put together an initial, 1-axis prototype to facilitate the mechanical design.

Figure:  initial Flyherder prototype (1-axis).  Hardware includes an Arduino nano, a 1-axis stepper motor drive (Gecko), and 1 linear rail (Haydon).  

The full 4-axis system uses an Arduino Mega and a 4-axis gecko drive to move the rails to any given position.  Using limit switches and the travel distance (in millimiters) of each rail, the Flyherder control system establishes a reference frame that is zeroed at one of the corners of the arena.  From there, it computes the necessary steps that each motor should move in order to reach the position specified by the user.

Figure:  final Flyherder control system (4-axis).  Hardware includes an Arduino mega, a 4-axis stepper motor drive (Gecko), and 4 linear rails (Haydon).

The full system includes serial communication libraries for both Python and MATLAB, so that users can programatically control each axis.

Figure:  final Flyherder control system with Graphical User Interface.

Here is a brief video of the system in operation.  It shows a cardboard mockup of the mechanics being developed at JFRC:

Software: 

FlyHerder Demo (pre-compiled binary)