The Columbus Instruments Grip Strength Meter (GSM) is designed to measure fore and hind limb grip strength in small laboratory rodents. This instrument employs either GSM in a single stand configuration in which the pull bars can be interchanged, or in a dual stand configuration using two GSMs so that fore and hind limb measurements can be done in rapid succession.

The software includes the following functionality

• Manage subjects: A subject is provided an ID within the GSM software and pertinent subject details (sex, date of birth, etc) are attached to the subject ID. As employment of the subject proceeds with GSM, data about grip strength performance (readings) are associated with the subject as well as the circumstances under which the data is collected (protocols).
• Perform and Collect Readings: A reading is the recording of a particular subject's grip strength. A reading is attached to the subject ID.
• Create and Assign Protocols: A protocol is a collection of parameters that define the configuration of the GSM, the number of readings to be performed, the circumstances under which readings are retained.
• Execute Trials: A trial is the performance of readings under the procedure as described by an associated protocol. A trial is completed when all readings are performed. For example, if a trial's protocol uses a forelimb mode, and requires 5 repetitions, and there are 4 subjects in the study, there will be 20 readings in the trial. If the trial's protocol measures both fore and hind limbs, the trial will require 40 readings to complete; twice as many as the forelimb-only protocol.
• Define Studies: A study is a collection of trials and a list of associated subjects.
• Enables users to conduct experiments without any keyboard or mouse input
• Can completely export all data to a single file for analysis, or export only a specific subset of data

• Added support for DFS3

• Added ability to load rosters of animals from CSV files

Each line in a CSV file can consist of as many as 4 but as few as 1 parameters for the subjects to be loaded in the following format: Subject Name, Mass, Sex, Date of Birth. Subjects with improperly formatted fields will be skipped during the load. Examples of rows in a loadable CSV file include:

• Mickey
• Mighty,20
• Minnie,15,Female
• Jerry,17,Male,05/01/1940

• Subject rosters for studies now remember order subjects were added
• Subjects in trials are now run in the order they were added to the study

This release fixeds a bug involving thresholds for measurements.

• Fixes long-running issue generating a default database on first-run
• Better handling of device detection errors
• Misc bug fixes

This release fixeds a bug involving thresholds for measurements.

• Forelimb detection force set to 300 grams
• Minimum measurement fixed to 30 grams

This release fixeds a handful of bugs relating to installing Grip Strength Meter.

• Software will properly detect a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system. SQLCE will be installed when the program is initially run.
• While running the program, units on the device will generally stay in sync with software.
• Auto-detect proper baud rate for connection to device. Removes possibility of some devices using incorrect baud rate settings.
• Fixed a rare error on startup w/ some data files by removing an unused property from the database schema.

This is the initial release of the from-the-ground-up rewrite of the Grip Strength Meter software. New and improved features include:

• Allows for flexible and logical organization of data - studies, protocols, subjects, trials, etc.
• Enables users to conduct experiments without any keyboard or mouse input
• Can completely export all data to a single file for analysis, or export only a specific subset of data