1. Vision is the dominant sense for many animals, and there is an enormous diversity in visual capabilities. Understanding the visual abilities of a given species can therefore be key for investigating its behaviour and evolution. However, many techniques for quantifying visual capability are expensive, require specialized equipment or are terminal for the animal.
2. Here, we discuss how to measure the optomotor (or optokinetic) response, an innate response that can be elicited without any training in a wide range of taxa, and which is quantifiable, accessible and non‐invasive, and provide guidance for carrying out optomotor experiments.
3. We provide instructions for building a customizable, programmable optomotor apparatus using 3D‐printed and low‐cost materials, discuss experimental design considerations for optomotor assays, including a guide that calculates the dimensions of stimuli of varying spatial frequency, and provide a table summarizing experimental parameters in prior optomotor experiments across a range of species.
4. Ultimately, making this simple technique more accessible will allow more researchers to incorporate measures of visual capability into their work. Additionally, the low cost and ease of construction of our apparatus will allow educators in a variety of settings to include optomotor assays in classroom activities or demonstrations. Although here we focus on using optomotor to measure visual acuity—the ability to perceive detail—the apparatus and stimuli described here can be adapted to measure visual capabilities including spectral, contrast and polarization sensitivity, as well as motion detection, among others.

中文翻译：

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一种可定制的低成本光电设备：一种功能强大的工具，可通过行为来衡量视觉能力

1. 视觉是许多动物的主要感觉，并且视觉能力存在巨大差异。因此，了解给定物种的视觉能力可能是调查其行为和进化的关键。然而，用于量化视觉能力的许多技术昂贵，需要专用设备或对于动物而言是终端。
2. 在这里，我们讨论如何测量光动力（或光动力）反应，这种先天反应可以在没有广泛种类群的任何培训的情况下被诱发，并且是可量化的，可访问的且无创的，并为进行光动力提供指导实验。
3. 我们提供了使用3D打印和低成本材料构建可定制的可编程光电装置的说明，讨论了光电测定的实验设计注意事项，包括计算空间频率变化的刺激尺寸的指南，并提供了汇总实验参数的表格在以前的跨物种光动力实验中
4. 最终，使这种简单的技术更易于使用，将使更多的研究人员将视觉能力的度量纳入其工作。此外，我们设备的低成本和易用性使教育工作者可以在各种环境中在课堂活动或演示中包括光动力试验。尽管这里我们专注于使用光动力来测量视敏度（感知细节的能力），但此处描述的设备和刺激可以调整为测量视力，包括光谱，对比度和偏振敏感度以及运动检测等。