
Opentrons raises $10M for scientists to automate lab experiments with robotics - sethbannon
https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/27/opentrons-raises-10-million-for-scientists-to-automate-lab-experiments-with-robotics/
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rubidium
For those who are un-aware of laboratory automation, this is not a new
industry. There are MANY automated liquid handlers on the market. Beckman,
Eppendorf, Hamilton, and Tecan are the larger names.

What's new is the way Opentrons is offering value: thru low-cost hardware and
open-source software. With the OT2 they ditched the use of a manual pipetters
with dedicated 8 and 1 channel pipetters (a good move). The software looks
more polished... but not caught up the industry yet. Definitely catering to
the DIY crowd.

The larger, highly capable robotic liquid handlers cost in the $100-500k range
(examples: [https://www.beckman.com/liquid-
handlers](https://www.beckman.com/liquid-handlers),
[https://www.hamiltoncompany.com/products/automated-liquid-
ha...](https://www.hamiltoncompany.com/products/automated-liquid-
handling/liquid-handling-workstations),
[https://lifesciences.tecan.com/products/liquid_handling_and_...](https://lifesciences.tecan.com/products/liquid_handling_and_automation)).

This little guy is the smallest of the batch, but interesting to keep an eye
on.

~~~
sigstoat
> The software looks more polished... but not caught up the industry yet.

most industry software in this area is garbage. i've seen the tecan software
in operation; those folks should be embarrassed.

> Definitely catering to the DIY crowd.

i'm tempted to get one and see if we can't get it into production. the up
front cost is only a bit more than an annual service contract for a tecan
machine which doesn't do much more, and is less flexible.

~~~
Thriptic
My god I couldn't agree more. I used a Tecan liquid handler for years and wow
did I hate it. It was very easy to fuck something up or make a change in the
software without an error being thrown or the user being notified; the GUI was
absolutely a black box to new users and I had to write my own manual to walk
labmates through what to do to run known protocols; there was 0 attempt at
optimizing movements to save time; the machine required manual calibration
every single time it was used in a shared environment to make sure that
someone hadn't changed tip alignment, plate holder position, or plate specs
manually or accidentally by crashing a tip; it was trivially easy to break the
arm or tips if you weren't paying attention and they cost a fortune to
replace; there was no version control etc etc.

Their hardware was also total crap. Both the main pump and tip cleaning pump
failed on me two times without any notification being thrown, the arm failed
once, tips broke countless times. Our regional Tecan rep was on a first name
basis with me for awhile and I wasn't even the owner of the machine.

I almost ended up taking a Tecan engineer certification class just so I could
use the equipment as a knowledgeable user. Tecan also wanted to charge me
something like 15 grand for an arm and tip solution which would handle 1536
well plates which I was able to replicate with 1 cent worth of plastic shims
and a few of their black 10 uL tips -_-

I will absolutely recommend that my lab looks into buying one of these.

~~~
willcanine
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!

~~~
kayhi
We're a distributor to many start ups and biotech companies and it's so
refreshing to hear this area being taken on!

------
willcanine
And we're hiring! Come work at the company democratizing sophisticated biotech
tools with open-source lab robots
[https://opentrons.com/jobs](https://opentrons.com/jobs)

~~~
rubidium
Will/have you open source the hardware for OT2 like you did for OT1
([https://github.com/Opentrons/otone_hardware](https://github.com/Opentrons/otone_hardware))?

~~~
willcanine
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...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/opentrons-landing-
img/pipettes/OT-2-Pipette-White-Paper.pdf)

~~~
the-dude
Sounds like no.

~~~
willcanine
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.

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laserson
Congrats! We've had a good amount of fun playing with the OT-One (and also
some frustrations). I think the large range of volumes is great, along with
what seems to be more streamlined/accurate pipetting. I think the enclosure is
also a solid feature.

One of my favorite features is the ability to use a simple Python API to
define a protocol. Will this still be the case or do people have to use the
GUI?

Is there a reasonable (cheap) path to upgrade?

~~~
willcanine
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 :)

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skosuri
Congrats! I want a OT-2! When does it ship? Also, when's the 96-well plate
head coming?

~~~
willcanine
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.

~~~
skosuri
OK. Will put in an order soon. Sri

~~~
willcanine
awesome! excited to work with you!

~~~
skosuri
Order #: 1304 It's for a stealth newco that we just started. Looking forward
to playing!

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Ccecil
Congrats!

Are the newer machines still using Smoothieware?

~~~
willcanine
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](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!

~~~
Ccecil
Great to hear. I work very closely with the project (hardware QA), as well as
RepRap. I have followed your machine for quite some time. I have mentioned it
to pretty much everyone I know who is in the field of chemistry/biology or
does fluid handling.

I bet things are a lot easier now that Smoothie has true 6 axis :)

It is great to see so many OSHW projects get going in the last few years.
Excited to see what the next few years brings.

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jayzee
congrats!

~~~
willcanine
Thanks Jay! :)

