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Ethotrack was designed to work with readily available hardware at an affordable price. To make the most of this material, it is important to respect certain rules:
Installation of the open field :
Install the open-field in a sufficiently bright place, with uniform and constant lighting. Give preference to constant artificial lighting located above the open-field in order to avoid shadows.
Avoid placing the open-field near a window, especially if the experiment is to take place over several days. Otherwise, block out the light from the window if possible.
Install the open-field in a quiet place, away from a traffic area to avoid any risk of the camera moving. Especially if the experiment is to take place over several days.
Choice and installation of the camera :
If the lighting conditions are good, any recent USB camera may be suitable.
When installing the camera, check on the manufacturer's website that you have the latest drivers available.
Position the camera in the center of the open-field (to avoid perspective errors), at a height that encompasses the entire area to be analyzed. Keep enough margin around the area to be analyzed to be able to adjust the arena if the camera moves between 2 tests.
Choice of bottom of the open-field :
If possible choose the background color to have the maximum contrast between the background and the animal to be detected.
Choice of computer :
Image processing uses a lot of resources. It is preferable to use a recent computer with at least 4 Giga Bytes of RAM, and a hard disk of sufficient size to record video files.
For reasons of speed, it is preferable to save the experiment file and the video files on an internal hard disk of the computer, and not on a removable disk, or a USB key.
When recording or analyzing it is best to close all unnecessary programs.
It is best to avoid using the computer while recording.
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