Song Torrent: A 96 Chamber Fly Courtship Recording Array.
The 96 Chamber Array and open-source software was designed to provide high throughput acquisition of Drosophila fly courtship songs. Up to 96 separate chambers can be recorded simultaneously along with temperature data for each chamber. Chambers are designed as three arrays of 32 chambers each and have sliding partitions to allow loading of separated males and females. The chambers can be top loaded using a mouth pipette with a sliding cover and loading hole or bottom loaded through a slit in the lower mesh. The latter method could be used by auto-loading systems. Two optogenetic light drivers are provided and their timing and brightness can be controlled. A camera frame trigger ouput is also provided. The software allows any number and arrangement of chambers to be recorded. A separate time and brightness comma-separated variable (CSV) file defines the optogenetic light pattern. A separate CSV file can be used to predefine the individual sample names and their chamber locations, or this information can be entered interactively in the GUI and saved. All data and metadata (lights, temperatures, camera triggers, audio, sample information, etc.) are saved to .WAV files