RF spotter

On the topic of apps in scienceRFspotter is an iPad app for mapping receptive fields on the fly. It’s intended as a quick way to coarsely map a cell’s RF before moving on to other stages in an experiment.

It uses the iPad touchscreen to control the stimulus and can mirror the output via HDMI or VGA to a monitor or projector.

Nicolas explains its intended use thusly:

The ideal use of RFspotter is for localizing RFs which may be scattered across an area larger than that covered by your experimental display. Instead of moving your display around, connect your iPad-2 to a projector and use RFspotter to explore a region as large as that covered by the projector’s beam. Once a unit of interest has been spotted, move your experimental display to the optimal location and conduct your experiments.

It has a comprehensive set of parameters and should be able to stimulate pretty much any visually responsive cell you might happen across.