LabNet

Alexej Schatz and the Winter Lab team at Humboldt University recently developed a control layer network, featured in eLife and available on GitHub.

LabNet is a simple, fast, and flexible open-source experimental software platform for parallel control over multiple animal behavior systems. This network is optimized for time critical operations, general automation, and remote control. Its architecture features a central instance executing overall control on local Raspberry Pis and TCP/IP transport occurs through Protobuf. The protocol supports a large number of languages such as Python, C#, and C++. Multiple tasks can be executed on one local instance at the same time. Despite the network communication, LabNet provides almost real time hardware control. The actor model design allows for modularity and functionality extensions, providing easy scalability as there can be any number of experimental chambers in the network. LabNet can be integrated into existing systems and supports a variety of hardware, including GPIOs, UARTs, audio output, Bpod, pyControl, as well as commercial systems from MedAssociates or Coulbourn Instrumentsor.

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. RRID:SCR_023712

Special thanks to Lan Hooton, and undergraduate neuroscience major, for providing this project summary.