Workshop 'Design and Print a Home Cage System'

The second COST TEATIME training school took place in June 2024 at the German Centre for the Protection of Laboratory Animals in Berlin.

Various commercial and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) home cage systems for monitoring rodents in laboratory animal science were presented. There were also courses on experimental design, data analysis, psychological and cognitive assessment, applying animal welfare in laboratory animal science, and the 3Rs. 

The workshop 'Design and Print a Home Cage System' aimed to demonstrate how a DIY setup capable of producing actionable data can be constructed using a simple example. Working under the guidance of the workshop facilitators, participants built and programmed a prototype called 'PIROSLAV' (Prototype InfraRed Open Source Locomotor Activity Evaluator), which uses a passive infrared sensor (PIR motion detector) to monitor bulk activity in the home cages.

PIROSLAV can be replicated according to this protocol, by a user without technical or programming knowledge.

Protocol by Daniela Domingues and Alice Melloni
Workshop facilitators: Davor Virag, Pia Kahnau, Paul Mieske, Ana-Marjia Virag