Data acquisition

Embedded hardware-based dynamic clamp systems offer feedback that is fast and precisely timed, but these systems are often expensive and sometimes inflexible. PC-based systems, on the other hand, allow more complex feedback, but real-time performance can be poor³.

The CED Signal dynamic clamp system gives you the best of both worlds. All real-time aspects of the system are executed by the Power1401’s fast embedded processor using pre-calculated lookup tables and optimised floating-point arithmetic, with the feedback calculations triggered by the ADC sampling for maximum stability. This software-based design is quick yet still provides great flexibility. The non-real-time aspects of the system are handled by the controlling PC to allow simplicity and ease of use. The result: a dynamic clamp system integrated into the standard Signal data acquisition software that outperforms generally available dynamic clamp systems, at a reasonable cost.

It has been shown³ by simulations and experiment that the performance of dynamic clamp systems is strongly affected by the update rate and latency of updates. The very high speed methods used by CED provide extremely high rates of update with low latencies, to allow you to undertake the most demanding experiments. The mechanism incorporates a hardware based overflow detector so that you can be sure that the required update rates have been achieved and that your data is trustworthy.

³ Bettencourt JC, Lillis KP, Stupin LR and White JA. Effects of Imperfect Dynamic Clamp: Computational and Experimental results. J Neurosci Methods. 2008 April 30; 169(2):282-289 †

† These references to published papers are provided for information purposes only and in no way imply any endorsement of CED products by the authors. Windows® is a registered trademark.