MICECRAFT: A FULL OPEN SOURCE HARDWARE ECOSYSTEM AND PYTHON PACKAGE FOR THE DESIGN, THE REAL-TIME MONITORING, AND THE DATA ANALYSIS OF NEW RODENT BEHAVIOUR STUDIES

MiceCraft is a comprehensive, open-source behavioral framework designed like a Lego box to provide researchers with all the necessary components for designing and crafting automated experiments for mice and rats. The system revolves around a modular hardware ecosystem consisting of interconnectable housing units, test areas, and specialized actuators such as levers, nose pokes, and liquid delivery pumps, all of which comply with strict animal welfare regulations. A central feature of the hardware is the MiceCraft gate, which utilizes RFID technology to check animal identity and a scale to weigh the animals. The gate is compatible with wired animals for optogenetics or electrophysiology. On the software side, MiceCraft provides an open-source Python package that manages experiment control, real-time monitoring, and data analysis. This software ensures high reliability through automated alarms, hot-device replacement, and the ability to simulate experiments without animals to refine logic before launching an experiment. The monitoring tools include event-driven video recording that captures only key behavioral moments, significantly reducing the burden of manual data review. For data analysis, the system generates comprehensive web-based dashboards that re-analyze full datasets multiple times a day and include built-in statistical assistants for advanced modeling like Principal Componant or Linear Discriminant Analyses PCA and LDA. By providing documented protocols for complex tests (such as social preference, collaboration, and delayed non-matching to position) MiceCraft creates a highly reproducible environment where all blueprints and code are shared via GitHub and a dedicated community wiki, ensuring that ambitious behavioral science remains accessible and transparent.
https://github.com/fdechaumont/micecraft
https://micecraft.org