willcanine
Joined 11 years ago
Karma
25
Submissions
24
Member since
Sep 23
Campaign ops turned biohacker.
View on Hacker NewsRecent submissions
Comment · 3 years ago
Leland Stanford's horse farm was more like an experimental engine lab, and his "Palo Alto System" set the Valley's course. An excerpt from the new book PALO ALTO: A HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA, CAPITALISM, AND THE WORLD
Comment · 8 years ago
awesome! excited to work with you!
Comment · 8 years ago
sorry if my answer is confusing. the short answer is: yes, there will be more (and more in-depth) open-source documentation of OT-2 than with OT-One, and not just limited to dumping everything in a github repo. This is rolling out in the coming weeks as things get finalized.
Comment · 8 years ago
yes, we love smoothieware! it's existence is one of the main reasons we're able to offer this tech at such an unheard-of low price. we've forked it (available here: https://github.com/Opentrons/SmoothiewareOT) to work with our OT-2 motor controller, which has more stepper drivers than the smoothieboard and is designed to fit on the head of the robot to minimize cabling. full board design (as well as all of our electronics designs) are going up on github in the next few weeks!
Comment · 8 years ago
hey, thanks! to answer your questions:
1 - yes, our python API can still be your main tool for creating protocols, no one needs to use the GUI if they dont want to. In fact, OT-2 runs a jupyter notebook onboard so you can just connect over wifi / USB, pull up the notebook in your browser, and live code to the robot (as well as run a python script through the App same w/ OT-One).
2 - yes, all OT-One users get a $2000 discount on the OT-2, so starting price for you is $2k :)
Comment · 8 years ago
totally agree. lowering that "activation energy" is one of the main focuses of our UX design team, and making sure that the machine doesn't break at the smallest bump is a core part of our hardware engineering philosophy. thanks for the input, very validating for us :)
Comment · 8 years ago
Thanks! Through user research we learned that most labs dont have robots today because 1. they are too expensive and 2. they dont have space in their lab for the huge machines currently available. Thats why we focused on low-cost and compact; the OT-2 is designed to fit on 1/2 of a standard lab bench so biologists can work alongside their robot.
OT-One was deff for the DIY crowd and there are lots of great hacks folks have done on it with our open API and hardware like plasmotron.org or this Alexa integration: https://youtu.be/s4WgCs-tH3o
On the other hand, the OT-2 is designed for the mainstream biologist, the folks that dont want to have to write code or hack hardware, just want something plug-and-play to do their pipetting for them. So far in our usability tests and for beta users, its working! :)
Comment · 8 years ago
This is exactly the pain we are trying to help in the lab -- your story is all too common!
It is crazy to me that we are the first lab automation company to bring best practices of consumer tech UX and engineering to the wet lab, but its true. We're the first to use continuous integration / delivery, Agile development, usability testing, easy APIs / DSLs -- the list goes on. Would love to work with you and restore your faith in what lab automation can be!
Comment · 8 years ago
Thanks Jay! :)
Comment · 8 years ago
Thank you! Would love to work with you! We are already shipping OT-2 robots, and right now with the amount of demand we have there is a 6 week lead time (though it is increasing fast).
The 96-well head wont be an addition to this robot because it would make it too top heavy and risk tipping it over -- best we can fit on this guy is the 8-channel pipette already available. We'll start considering things like a 96-well head when we decide to move up-market and start making bigger robots, but for now we are very happy to be making lab robots accessible to labs with smaller budgets that today have to do all their pipetting by hand.
Comment · 8 years ago
yes, we will be open-sourcing the hardware, though not in quite the same way as with the OT-One. All the OT-One parts are off the shelf, 3D printed, or laser-cut, so putting all the files on github makes a lot of sense. But the OT-2 is a lot of custom parts injection molded / extruded / CNC'd by our production team in Shenzhen, and it is a lot harder to both share those designs on our end, and to make anything out of them as a hacker. So we'll be releasing a lot of high fidelity CAD files of the full assembly, as well as deeper dive documentation like this whitepaper on our new pipette designs: https://s3.amazonaws.com/opentrons-landing-img/pipettes/OT-2...
Comment · 8 years ago
And we're hiring! Come work at the company democratizing sophisticated biotech tools with open-source lab robots https://opentrons.com/jobs