CAGE GUARD
With the Cage Guard system, you really know what is going on in your cages. This solution provides real time data about, drinking, feeding, activity, temperature, humidity, light intensity and an additional analog input of your choice.
What do you get?
Cage Guard provides real time data on the following parameters:
- Drinking
- Feeding
- NEW: Body weight
- Activity
- Air temperature
- Humidity
- Light intensity
- Processing of analog data input from an external source
How does it work?
The stainless steel mounting unit with the data logger on top contains all sensors and the scales for drinking and feeding measurements. The unit is powered via a standard Ethernet network cable that sends the data to the computer, too. Only one cable for power and data.
Scalability
It is very easy to setup a large number of cages because electrical power and data transfer share the same cable. All cages are daisy chained with a standard Ethernet network cable. To learn about the options of controlling the system, take a look at the System architecture page.
Data Acquisition & Analysis
Data is analyzed in real time and presented in tables and graphs immediately. Data can be pooled already during the experiment. Extensive analysis tools enable you to correlate the data of the different sensors. Various export formats (xls, txt, xml, csv, html) are provided to work with the data in other applications.
SYSTEM COMPONENTS
Drinking & Feeding:
- Advanced high-precision electronics for superior accuracy
- Ready-to-use, no calibration through the user necessary
- Temperature compensation
- Unaffected by vibrations or other interferences by the animals
- Failed measurements are filtered
- Quick and easy exchange of bottles and feeder due to magnetic attachment
- Different bottle tips for water-based (0.8mm-diameter opening) and alcohol-based (0.5mm-diameter opening) drinking solutions available.
Specifications
- Channels: 2
- Max. load weight: 300g
- Drinking bottle volume: 150ml
- Resolution: 10mg
- Long term-fluctuation: <
- Noise: depends on temporal resolution: typ: ±10mg, max: ±15mg for a standard measuring interval of 1 minute
Temperature dependency: typ: 0.02g/°C, max: 0.1g/°C
Activity
The infrared sensors of the system measure the activity of an animal by recording the body heat image of that animal and its spatial movement. The activity is measured in all three dimensions in the range of the sensor. Since infrared radiation cannot pass through standard cage plastics, sensors in adjacent cages do not interfere with each other.
Temperature/Relative Humidity
The feature of logging temperature and relative humidity is well suited to monitor the ambient conditions in animal facility rooms. The integrated high precision sensors for temperature and relative humidity are calibrated and cover a wide measurement range.
- Temperature Sensor: Multi-sensor module with calibrated digital output
- Measuring Range: -40 to 60°C
- Resolution: 14Bit or 0.01°C
- Accuracy: < ±0.4°C at 5 to 40°C, < ±1°C below 5°C / above 40°C
- Humidity Sensor: Multi-sensor module with calibrated digital output
- Measuring Range: 0 to 100% relative humidity (RH)
- Resolution: 12Bit or 0.03% RH
- Accuracy: < ±2% at 10 to 90% RH, < ±4% at 0 to 10% and 90 to 100% RH, Non-linearity (10 to 90% RH) < ±3% RH
Light Intensity
The light intensity logging feature is predominantly designed to monitor the animal facilities ambient and to detect potential faults or failures in illumination. The measurement gives a general comparative idea of how much light there is in an area (sunlight v. shade, lights on/off, etc.) but not absolute values. The spectral response of the sensor emulates the human eye. Infrared wavelengths (emitted from halogen lamps, for example) interfering with light in the visible range are sharply attenuated.
Similar to the human eye the measured light intensity varies with the direction from which it reaches the sensor.
A special saving procedure ensures that flickering of a light source caused by the mains voltage doesn’t influence the reading. The light sensor is high sensitive from 1 to 20.000 lux. Because of that minor changes in the light intensity may yield significant differences in the measured values. This has to be considered when inspecting the results of light intensity logging.
- Sensor: Light-to-voltage optical sensor with photodiode/amplifier chip
- Measuring Range: 0 to 20.000Lux
- Resolution: 1Lux at 0 to 200Lux, 10Lux at 200 to 2.000Lux, 100Lux at 2.000 to 20.000Lux
- Accuracy: < ±3Lux, Non-linearity < ±2Lux, Zero error (offset) < ±1Lux
Analog Input (from External Sources)
The connector for external data input accepts any kind of analog signal sources. The analog-to-digital converter has a resolution of 10Bit.
- Analog-to-Digital Converter: On-chip, 2.5V reference voltage
- Signal Input: 0 to 2.5V
- Impedance: 1 MOhm
- Resolution: 10Bit or 2.44mV
- Accuracy: < ±3Bit, Non-linearity < ±1Bit, Zero error (offset) < ±2.5Bit
If you have questions concerning this product, please don´t hesitate to use the following e-mail address: info@biobserve.com