Open — BEhavioural and AuTonomous operant Box — is an open-source, modular, low-cost platform for autonomous home-cage operant conditioning and long-duration behavioural data acquisition in rodents.
Mice interact with behavioural tasks inside their home cage over long periods, which reduces repeated handling while increasing within-subject data density. Everything needed to build, run and extend a system is published here: mechanical design, electronics, firmware, control software and documentation.
🌐 open-beatbox.github.io · 📖 Technical manual · 🎬 Video tutorials
| I want to… | Go to |
|---|---|
| Understand what the system does | Project website |
| Build one | Assembly tutorials |
| Follow an interactive bench guide | Interactive assembly guide |
| Read the full technical reference | Technical manual |
| Order parts | Master bill of materials |
| Watch the build | YouTube channel |
Each layer lives in its own repository under the open licence that suits it.
| Repository | Contents | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Open-BeatBox_Hardware | CAD, enclosure, PCB and mechanical design files (V2 and V3), with print- and laser-ready exports | CERN-OHL-S-2.0 |
| Open-BeatBox_Firmware | Placeholder for stand-alone firmware releases; the module firmware lives in Open-BeatBox_Software/micropython |
GPL-3.0 |
| Open-BeatBox_Software | PC application (Qt), data acquisition and experiment control, module firmware (MicroPython) | AGPL-3.0-or-later |
| Open-BeatBox_Documentation | Source of the technical manual, the module assembly guides and the master BOM (source/build/assembly-tutorials), technical notes and media |
CC-BY-4.0 |
| Open-BeatBox.github.io | The public website and its build pipeline | AGPL-3.0 |
The website builds the manual at deploy time by pulling the documentation in as a submodule. The engineering repositories stand alone.
flowchart TD
W["Open-BeatBox.github.io<br/>website + CI"] -->|submodule| D["Open-BeatBox_Documentation<br/>manual source"]
W -.->|links to| H["Open-BeatBox_Hardware"]
W -.->|links to| F["Open-BeatBox_Firmware (pointer)"]
W -.->|links to| S["Open-BeatBox_Software"]
Clone the website with git clone --recurse-submodules, or the documentation alone if you only want the manual.
A BEATBox is an instrumented home cage built from independent modules, so a lab can build only the parts a protocol needs.
| Module | Role |
|---|---|
| Frame and enclosure | Laser-cut and 3D-printed structure that carries the modules |
| Feeder | Motorised pellet delivery with IR verification |
| Photobeam gate | Infrared passage detection between compartments |
| Screen | Two displays; responses detected by infrared light curtains (no touch input) |
| Light ring | Controlled illumination and visual cueing |
| Water bottle mount | Fixed bottle position and guide |
Typical uses: autonomous operant conditioning, reward-delivery and sensor-triggered tasks, longitudinal home-cage monitoring, and circadian or motivational dynamics.
If you use Open-BEATBox in published work, please cite both the reference preprint and the Zenodo record of the release you used:
Euvrard M, Benzina N, Domingues D, Mondragón-González SL, Huzard D, Penderia G, Travert-Jouanneau Y, Lavielle O, Lousada E, Schreiweis C, Lorenz A, Pavlov P, Ajili Z, Lebegue L, Tissier P, Burguière E. "Open-BEATBox: an open-source autonomous operant chamber for high-throughput data acquisition of complex behaviour." bioRxiv, 2026. doi: 10.64898/2026.11.07.765109
Each release of the Hardware, Software and Documentation repositories is archived on Zenodo with its own DOI (release biorxiv-v1 for the version in the preprint: Hardware 10.5281/zenodo.24080048, Software 10.5281/zenodo.24080479, Documentation 10.5281/zenodo.24080481). The firmware is part of the Software record. Every repository has a CITATION.cff file for GitHub's Cite this repository button.
Open-BEATBox uses layer-specific open licences, so each part carries terms appropriate to its medium:
- Hardware — CERN-OHL-S-2.0 (strongly reciprocal open hardware)
- Firmware — GPL-3.0
- Software and website — AGPL-3.0
- Documentation — CC-BY-4.0
Each repository's own LICENSE file is authoritative for that layer.
Contributions are welcome. File issues and pull requests in the repository that owns the material:
- Assembly steps, BOM entries and supplier references → Open-BeatBox_Documentation (
source/build/assembly-tutorials) - Manual pages, protocols and technical notes → Open-BeatBox_Documentation
- CAD, PCB and mechanical design → Open-BeatBox_Hardware
- Firmware → Open-BeatBox_Software (
micropython/) - GUI, acquisition and analysis → Open-BeatBox_Software
- Website and documentation build → Open-BeatBox.github.io
Validation reports, troubleshooting notes and reproducible data-output examples from other labs are particularly useful.
Developed at the Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon (CRNL), CH Le Vinatier, Bron, France.
