Ratacademy Build Guide

Ratacademy (RatAcad) is a high-throughput, automated facility for training rats on behavioral tasks. Animals live in laser-cut behavior boxes, earn water by nose-poking, and move through training stages automatically. Dozens of boxes run from a few computers, and every trial goes into a shared DataJoint database.

This guide collects everything needed to build, run and maintain a Ratacademy: cut files, parts, computer setup, software, daily and weekly procedures, and the data pipeline.

• Start here

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  How the pieces fit together, and the build roadmap step by step.

  Architecture · Roadmap

• Build the rig

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  Laser-cut enclosure files (SVG/DWG) with measured dimensions, and the parts list.

  Enclosure · Hardware

• Set up software

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  Control computer, Bpod NoGUI, BpodAcademy, protocols.

  Ubuntu setup · BpodAcademy

• Run the academy

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  Daily checks, weekly water change, valve calibration.

  Daily · Weekly

• Data

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  Bpod → NAS → DataJoint on AWS, and how to query it.

  Data pipeline · Access

• Help

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  Troubleshooting, scripts and how to improve this guide.

  Troubleshooting · Contribute

At a glance

flowchart LR
    A[Laser-cut box<br/>3 nose-pokes] --> B[Bpod]
    B -- USB --> C[Control PC<br/>BpodAcademy + MATLAB]
    C -- nightly --> D[(Lab NAS)]
    D -- nightly --> E[(DataJoint<br/>on AWS)]
    E --> F[Analysis]

Software

	Repository
Bpod with headless (NoGUI) control	RatAcad/Bpod_Gen2_Legacy
Multi-box control GUI	RatAcad/BpodAcademy
DataJoint pipeline	RatAcad/dj_ratacad
Task protocols (MATLAB)	private; see Protocols

Open development item

The NoGUI Bpod is based on Bpod 1.63, so new Bpods must have their firmware downgraded. Merging upstream Sanworks Bpod into the NoGUI fork is the top software to-do. See Bpod → Known limitation.

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Developed in the Scott Lab at Boston University. Found a mistake, or built a box? Help improve this guide.