ROBucket: Rodent Operant Bucket

; SoftwarThe Rodent Operant Bucket (ROBucket), designed by Dr. Alexxai Kravitz and Kavya Devarakonda of the Eating and Addiction Section, Diabetes Endocrinology and Obesity Branch, NIDDK, is an inexpensive and easily assembled open-source operant chamber, based on the Arduino microcontroller platform, that can be used to train mice to respond for a reward.

The apparatus contains two nose pokes, a drinking well, and a solenoid-controlled sucrose delivery system. The chamber can easily run magazine training, fixed ratio and progressive ratio training schedules, and can be programmed to run more complicated behavioral paradigms.

In their 2016 paper, “ROBucket: A low cost operant chamber based on the Arduino microcontroller,” Kavya Devarakonda, Katrina P. Nguyen, and Alexxai V. Kravitz validate ROBucket by demonstrating its application in an operant conditioning paradigm, as well as, detail the hardware comprising ROBucket, and the flexible software controlling it.

Further documentation of this device can be found on the NIDDK website, where Dr. Kravitz and his lab share ROBucket construction instructions, ROBucket design files, ROBucket source code, and 3D printing design files.

This research tool was created by your colleagues. Please acknowledge the Principal Investigator, cite the article in which the tool was described, and include an RRID in the Materials and Methods of your future publications.  Project portal RRID:SCR_021565; Software RRID:SCR_021610