Plush Neuron Operating Instructions

Powering On/Off

On one side of the Plush Neuron body is a wooden panel with a charging jack and two slide switches. The switch closest to the charging jack is the power switch. Slide the switch away from the jack to turn the neuron on.

Nothing will happen right away; it takes about 30 seconds for the Raspberry Pi inside to boot up. When the neuron is ready, the LEDs will turn on.

To turn the neuron off, slide the switch toward the charging jack.

Charging the Battery

Move the slide switch toward the charging jack. This turns the neuron off and allows the battery to be charged.

Set the Tenergy charger (included) to 0.9 amps: low current.

Plug the charger into the neuron's charging jack. The LED on the charger will glow red if the battery is charging. When it glows green, the battery is fully charged.

Mute Switch

The second slide switch is the mute switch. Slide it toward the charging jack to mute the audio output. The LEDs and buttons will still work, but there will be no sound effects.

Slide the switch away from the charging jack to enable audio output.

HDMI and USB Ports

On the opposite side of the Plush Neuron body is another wooden panel with an HDMI port and a USB port. These are only used for debugging or updating the software on the Raspberry Pi. Regular users should not need to use these ports.

Controls

Each dendrite has a squeezable pushbutton at the tip for supplying input, and a rotary switch that sets the weight. The dendrite's LED display shows the current weight value, which can range from -4 to +4. Green LEDs indicate a positive weight; red LEDs indicate a negative weight. A blue LED indicates zero. When the weight is zero, applying inputs to the dendrite will have no effect on the neuron's activation or firing.

The body of the neuron has two LED displays and a rotary switch in between. The LED display closest to the dendrite shows the net activation, i.e., the sum of the weighted inputs. The rotary switch sets the threshold value, and the LED display on the other side shows the threshold value. A threshold LED that is half bright indicates a value of 0.5, so if there is one fully lit green LED and one half-bright green LED, the threshold value is 1.5.

If the threshold value is less than zero, the neuron will fire spontaneously without any inputs. You can use an input with a negative weight to force the net activation below the threshold and temporarily shut off the neuron.

The axon has three LED strips that flash white when the neuron fires. At the tip of the axon is a barrel connector. This can plug into a jack in the tip of a dendrite of another neuron to create a simple neural network.

Back to the main Plush Neuron page