  A complete data acquisition and signal output control system for synchronous
stimuli generation, geared towards in vivo neuroscience experiments, was
developed using the Terasic DE2i-150 board. All emotions and thoughts are an
emergent property of the chemical and electrical activity of neurons. Most of
these cells are regarded as excitable cells (spiking neurons), which produce
temporally localized electric patterns (spikes). Researchers usually consider
that only the instant of occurrence (timestamp) of these spikes encodes
information. Registering neural activity evoked by stimuli demands timing
determinism and data storage capabilities that cannot be met without dedicated
hardware and a hard real-time operational system (RTOS). Indeed, research in
neuroscience usually requires dedicated electronic instrumentation for studies
in neural coding, brain machine interfaces and closed loop in vivo or in vitro
experiments. We developed a complete embedded system solution consisting of a
hardware/software co-design with the Intel Atom processor running a free RTOS
and a FPGA communicating via a PCIe-to-Avalon bridge. Our system is capable of
registering input event timestamps with 1{\mu}s precision and digitally
generating stimuli output in hard real-time. The whole system is controlled by
a Linux-based Graphical User Interface (GUI). Collected results are
simultaneously saved in a local file and broadcasted wirelessly to mobile
device web-browsers in an user-friendly graphic format, enhanced by HTML5
technology. The developed system is low-cost and highly configurable, enabling
various neuroscience experimental setups, while the commercial off-the-shelf
systems have low availability and are less flexible to adapt to specific
experimental configurations.
