This page supplements Land BR, Johnson BR, Wyttenbach RA, and Hoy RR (2004) Tools for physiology labs: Inexpensive equipment for physiological stimulation. J. Undergrad. Neurosci. Ed. 3(1):A30-A35. Download a pdf here.
General Info About Building Circuitry
There are many web sites teaching design and construction of electronic
circuits. These are a few, concentrating on construction, that you may find
useful:
Kelsey Park School Electronics
Club (good info on soldering, handling of components, etc.)
Electronix Express links page (construction
tips, links to other sites)
Stimulus Isolation Unit
PC board (see note below);
part list.
Analog Pulse Generator
PC board (see note
below); part list.
Microcontroller Pulse Generator
PC board (see note
below); part list; ATMEL
code; MatLab GUI code; alternate
circuit with amplitude control.
For more information about the microcontroller and for downloadable software
to program the chip, see the ATMEL
web site.
For links to sellers of the hardware to burn the ATMEL code into the controller
chip, see this
page on the ATMEL site. All vendors listed give a price of $79 for the kit,
which can be used to produce any number of programmed chips. We have generally
had good experience with DigiKey.
(Note: some figures in our paper may refer to the AT90s8515 rather than the
ATmega8515. The two chips are substantially the same, but the ATmega8515 is
the currently available version.)
PC Board Note
These files are meant to be used with Windows software from ExpressPCB.com
so that you can have them make your PC boards. Each board fits ExpressPCB's
inexpensive "miniboard" format. This is the least expensive way that
we have found to have small quantities of PC boards made.
Go to the main Crawdad page
Go to the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education