The development of a low cost animal behavior measurement system

In this paper, we introduce a low-cost system for animal behavior measurement. This system includes four animal experiment cages, each cage being attached to a very sensitive vibration sensor. The output signal of each vibration sensor is connected to a four-channel data acquisition system. The vibration sensor we adopt here is modified from a low cost piezoelectric buzzer. The self-made data acquisition system has four 24 bit A/D converters controlled by a signal-chip microprocessor. The microprocessor then sends this vibration information into a PC computer from a RS-232 port for animal behavior analysis.