A new precise microcomputer based rotometer.

The rotometer described here consists of a data acquisition system made of several reed relays which are activated by a small moving magnet when the animal performs rotations. The apparatus has an angular discrimination which is dependent on the number of reed relays used. A simple interface is used to normalize the pulses produced when the reed relay contacts are closed. This normalized output closes key contacts in the keyboard of a microcomputer resulting in ASCII strings. A simple BASIC program is used for computation of various turn fractions. The program also calculates the total number of movements over time, allowing the assessment of activity vs. time.