Bento Lab Feedback and uBiome kit up for grabs.

[Bethan]

Hey all,

I have been a fairly silent spectator on this group so far, but I'd like to ask for your feedback now. 

I've been working on Bento Lab for the last two years with Philipp Boeing - some of you may know the project. We are members of the London Biohackspace and iGEM alumni. When we started out with the project, we were inspired by a number of awesome DIYbio hardware projects - openPCR, GaudiLabs to name just a few. However at our biohackspace, we kept seeing a large number of people joining and then losing interest, because building the hardware was not what they were wanted to do. You could argue that they should have more patience, but we saw it as a challenge to build a tool that could serve as a starter kit. The kind of kit you could use when you first get into genetics as a teenager. 

Fast forward to now, we came up with our own version of the 'all in one' lab, we have built multiple versions of Bento Lab and we have beta tested with a group of really amazing people over the last six months. (One of my favourite is a group of retirees in their 70' doing mushroom DNA barcoding - really true citizen scientists.) We are still not at the price point that we would like to reach, but we recognise that we need start getting the labs out there to test our vision and make progress.

So, we are now preparing for a Kickstarter. We are looking for feedback via a survey, and we're offering a raffle for a uBiome kit in exchange for comments! If you'd like to help us by doing the survey, it's pretty quick and it's here: http://goo.gl/forms/CvQYex5XjF 

I recognise the project may not be relevant to everyone in this group, but we really appreciate any suggestions you have.

Thanks for your help :) 

Bethan

N.B. possibly of interest and not mentioned on our website yet - we’re planning to release both the firmware source code and the electronic specifications openly. We’re still looking for the best approach/open license for this, so if you have some advice for us, please get in touch.

[Dakota Hamill]

Congrats on everything.  I remember meeting you at iGEM 2 or 3 years ago and saw one of your earlier prototypes.  Looks super sleek now!

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[210jrd]

Looking forward to seeing where this is going, good luck. JD

[John Griessen]

On 03/03/2016 05:13 PM, Dakota Hamill wrote:
> Looks super sleek now!
Yes, it does! Congrats on the progress.

[Damien - GlowGene]

Congratulations on what you've accomplished so far Bethan, I love the all-in-one and portability aspect of the Bento Lab.
Gene engineering, molecular cloning, insert verification etc.would be some other things people could do with the Bento Lab.
I wish you lots of luck :)

[Bethan]

Thanks so much for the feedback everyone :) It's been a really enjoyable project to work on, and we got to work with some really amazing people! 

[Jake]

Is it a misprint or does that little centrifuge really pull 20k RCF?

[Bethan]

Hey Jake - max RCF is 19200. Outer radius 43mm and max RPM 20000. 

[Alexey Zaytsev]

Hi, Bethan,

congratulations on successful kickstarter!

I'm also developing an open-source PCR, and was wondering if you could answer a couple questions if it's not a secret.

I see those small holes between the tubes in the thermocycler. I've seen similar design in a new bio-rad cycler. What's the reason to have them?

Also, what are your ramp up/down temperatures?

Thanks in advance!

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[Cathal (Phone)]

Probably to minimise thermal mass in the heat block, to improve efficiency and ramp rate.

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[Philipp Boeing]

Cathal is correct! Currently, max ramp time is 2°C / second. 

[Alexey Zaytsev]

Thank you, makes lots of sense!

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