No, our system is completely plug and play. It will be shipped with all parts assembled. All you will need to buy in addition is a patch cord, fiber optic cannulae, and an adapter to connect the patch cord to your fibers (i.e. ceramic split sleeves).

All units are equipped with 3 LEDs for recording: 470 nm, 560 nm and 415 nm, to be used for green sensors, red sensors and motion control (isosbestic point for GCaMP), respectively.

You can record from a maximum of 8 different branches from a 200µm fiber optic implant or 4 different branches from a 400 µm fiber optic implant.

The FP3002 system allows you to configure the duty cycle of excitation LEDs to reduce the risk of photobleaching. The longest recording with one of our systems to date was 21 days.

Operating System
Bonsai is only compatible with Windows. Mac and Linux are not supported. Windows 10 is recommended.

Processor
Any Intel or AMD processor with a minimum of four logical cores and clock speed of 1.6GHz.

Graphics
No graphics cards are required, Bonsai’s visualizers run off of your CPU.

RAM
8GB or more.

Disk Space
0.9GB of space is required for Bonsai and packages, and Spinnaker. 

Ports
At least one USB A 3.0, converters or extension cables are NOT recommended. Ethernet or wifi connection also required.

Recommended computers for fiber photometry
• ASUS VivoBook K571 Laptop
• Lenovo Thinkpad T480 Laptop
• Lenovo Thinkpad T14 Laptop

Yes — we offer fiber optic cannulae (FOC) that have been optimized for fiber photometry. Our FOC have black ceramic ferrules, which have higher efficiency and lower autofluorescence than other FOC. They are available with 200um or 400um cores and 1.25mm or 2.5mm diameter ferrules. Please visit our product page for pricing and more information.

You should use a mating sleeve to connect your patch cord to the ferrule. We offer mating sleeves made of white ceramic, which allows you to more easily detect light loss at the connection point when plugged into your test subject. Please visit our product page for pricing and more information.

Stock fibers from Neurophotometrics are 10mm long so that you can cleave them in lab to whatever length you need for your experiments. We do offer in-house fiber cleaving services for free if needed, however it does extend the lead time ~3 weeks. We have published instructions on how to cleave fibers effectively on the Resources Page.

Yes! Please see the product page for patch cords.

FP3002 comes with both an SMA and an FC adaptor. FP3001 systems produced after December 1, 2018 have FC connectors. If your patch cords have SMA connectors, we can suggest an adaptor for purchase through ThorLabs.

Trigger mode 1 (BSC1) records with 470 and 560 LEDs in phase while 415 is out of phase.

Trigger mode 2 (BSC2) records with 470 and 560 LEDs out of phase. This trigger mode does not record from the 415 (isosbestic) channel).

Trigger mode 3 (BSC3) records with all excitation channels (560, 470, and 415) out of phase.

The TTL modes behave similarly to their BSC counterparts, but will only be active as long as a 5V TTL is sent to BNC1. Please do not use a TTL stronger than 5V — you may fry the electronics inside!

The camera should arrive with the optimum settings pre-programmed and should not be changed. If you suspect your camera settings were changed, refer to the settings below.

The gain should be high during alignment and lowered during recording. Gain is a digital amplification that uniformly increases signal and noise. Thus, increasing gain during alignment will help to visualize fibers. Decreasing the gain to zero during recording will maximize dynamic range (as increases do not affect SNR).

We align your system before we send it, but it may need to be aligned to your specific patch cord. Instructions for aligning the FP3001.

Some of the earliest FP3001 Neurophotometrics systems have a minimum power output from the 470nm LED that may be too high for your experimental needs. If this has been a problem for you, contact us and we will send you a free neutral density filter (NDF). Swapping in an NDF is a quick process — about 5 minutes — and it will lower the output power to a more suitable range. We work with customers on an individual basis to determine how much power reduction is appropriate.

Make sure you have installed Bonsai 2.4. After installation, ensure that the application you use is Bonsai (x64).

FP3001: The most important package is the PointGrey package, but some other video and visual packages are required. We recommend checking out our Getting Started with Bonsai guide for a more complete list of packages to install.

FP3002: Requires Spinview as detailed in the manual.

This depends on your viral serotype, titer, and promoter. We generally recommend waiting 2-3 weeks for good expression.

We recommend buying viruses from Addgene.

If you are starting new experiments, we recommend starting with GCaMP8m. GCaMP 6 and 7 variants also work very well. For RCaMP, we have had good results with jRCaMP1b. If you plan to use both GCaMP and RCaMP in the same experiment, we recommend using GCaMP6s instead of GCaMP7s to minimize the difference in kinetics between the two fluorophores. For more information on how to choose a sensor, see the latest version of the hardware manual.