9:30a-6p: - Workshop + Workshop: Working with and building open source hardware for laboratory automation. +
++ Discussion Theme 1: Current challenges of lab automation and open hardware +
++ What are the challenges people are facing when trying to use or develop laboratory automation hardware? There are many different tools already available for laboratory automation, some of which are open source: e.g., OpenTrons, OpenFlexureMicroscope, Mothbox, but integrating them into experimental workflows or developing new tools that are compatible with them remains challenging. +
++
++ Discussion Theme 2: Community Building, Goal Alignment, Calibration, and Shared Standards +
++Shared infrastructure implies that we could run the same experiments on each other’s hardware, perhaps using common control algorithms. However, for that to be possible, we need to calibrate and optimize the tools such that they are actually interchangeable, flexible, robust and generalizable. Is this currently already happening? Could it happen? How could we improve data exchange, sharing methods, and learning best practices from the community?
6-9:00p:
@@ -100,18 +114,26 @@
9:30a-6p:
- Workshop
+
+ Discussion Theme 3: Where do we go from here? +
++There are many different (small) communities working on open-source hardware for laboratory automation. Working together could be synergistic, but organizing a larger community also has overhead. What do we think are (realistic) plans for this community moving forward?
6-9:00p: Dinner at Big Time
-- Code, documentation, and other resources used in the April 2024 workshop can be found in this GitHub repository. + Code, documentation, and other resources used in the April 2024 workshop can be found in this GitHub repository. Other information such as a link to the Google drive should have been sent to participants in emails from Salt Hale.