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[Summer’16 Internship] The Dragonfly: Laser set-up, version 3

Given the previous problems, I then started on a new set-up hopeing to 1) solve the curvature of the beam problem 2) make a more stable, cleaner set-up.

The final result:

What I did:

I cut wood to use for a stand, and used an acrylic sheet for a base. I made the Y servo mirror much longer horizontally so that the Y servo would reflect a wider range of movement fro the X servo. I met one of my goals, to create a more stable, cleaner set-up. However, I still found that there was some curvature of the laser beam. I am afraid that that might be unavoidable, but also could be easy to work around using code.


[Summer’16 Internship] The Dragonfly: Building a servo laser set-up, prototype 2

I built a servo laser set-up (prototype 2) that allows me to control the movement of the laser beam across a curved screen using an X direction servo and a Y direction servo.

Below is the final result of prototype 2:

The problems:

The hot glue on the mirrors makes the mirrors tilt at an angle, and not line up exactly with the wooden sticks.

This curves the laser beam, and does not make it perfectly straight. Furthermore, my set-up was altered many times to get the laser, the mirrors and the screen to line up. Thus, the set-up is overall very messy and filled with scraps of old glue, tape, and wood.

By Patricia Aguilar


[Summer’16 Internship] The Dragonfly: Connecting the laser to the Spikerbox

From previous neural recordings, I have data of the spikes of the TSDNs. However, I had yet to find a way to record the onset of the stimulus (turning on the laser) so that I could correlate it to the spikes. In order to both simultaneously record the event of the laser turning on and the neural recording of the daringly TSDN, I exchanged my neuron Spikerbox for a Muscle Spikerbox Pro, which allows me two channels (later I would find that I didn’t even need the second).

Basic schematic for how this will be accomplished:

This allows me to simultaneously record whether the laser is on and record from the neuron of the dragonfly.

Here are some more pictures of how I accomplished this:

Below is a video of the final result:

The red lines on the laptop screen represent the laser turning on. I do not yet have an event marking the laser turning off– maybe that’s the next step! Also, the white recording on the laptop screen is the recording from the electrodes (which will be recording from the dragonfly neuron).

By Patricia Aguilar