
OpenTrons: Open Source Robotic Liquid Handling - adenadel
http://opentrons.com/
======
mbreese
Wait a minute - are you actually depressing the top pipettor here? (I was
about to say "manually", but that doesn't sound right). That can't be too
reproducible. And how is the pipettor attached?

Why not use an electronic pipet that does all of that for you? I remember
using a digital pipettor years ago that was already programmable for just this
type of application (eppendorf maybe?).

That's really the issue that needs to be front and center - how reproducible
is this machine. For any lab that could use one of these, that is always the
primary concern. What I'd like to see is something like a dye test where you
diluted a dye into each well on a 96 well plate and then used a plate reader
to determine how precise you are.

The second consideration is speed. How fast can this possibly be? I've used a
liquid handling robot before that "only" had a 4-channel head, and it was slow
enough that I eventually gave up and set the plates up by hand with an
8-channel pipet. Precision is the main concern, but speed is a close second.
If you want to replace manual pipetting, you better be faster than a grad
student.

And if a lab is able to use automation, the P1000 in the front page video is
not going to be what they need. There are few applications where you'll want
to pipet 200-1000ul in an automated manner - there are many more applications
for 1-10ul. So I'd like to see more information on what pipettors are
supported, and how do you change them?

As someone below mentioned - there is just too much missing information on the
page. I had to resize my browser just to see the full video, which answered a
couple of questions, but not all.

How many labs are currently using your machine, and for how many are these
just toys to play with vs production machines? Meaning - if a lab is setup to
properly test the machine, they probably have a few other liquid handlers in
place. How many of their protocols can they transfer to the OT-One? And would
any of them choose this over a more advanced machine?

~~~
willcanine
Thanks for taking a look at our stuff and taking the time to comment.

As I said below, we have shipped 51 robots so far and most are in daily use by
the academic research labs and biotech companies that bought them. Serial
dilutions, mother daughter plating, ELISA, PCR prep, ligations/digestions,
heat shock transformations, and soon Gibson assembly are the applications most
widely run on the OT-One.

Yes we do depress the top of the manual pipette, just like you would do by
hand. Do you trust your manual pipetting to be reproducible? Thats exactly the
same thing that is happening here. Agreed we need a dye test to show
reproducibility/precision/accuracy, and it is currently in the works (you can
find a scale test showing accuracy/precision on our blog, blog.opentrons.com).
But from running the machine for 6 months and getting good biological data on
it, I can tell you that it reliably hits the desired volume when correctly
calibrated. And it can hit different volumes each transfer w/o setting the
pipette, it just presses the plunger down the desired amount (say you want
100ul using a p200, it pushes down 50%). The electronic pipettes you are
talking about cost more than our whole robot.

Our current users disagree with you that we need to be faster than a grad
student, thought when turned up to full speed it is faster (but needs to be
bolted to the bench when you turn it up that fast). In fact, the grad students
that use the machine love it because they can go do other things and not worry
about errors in their pipetting. Also, the PRO version of the OT-One can hold
a single and an 8-channel pipette at the same time. Users can choose a p1000,
p200, or p10, and we can consistently transfer 1ul of liquid fusing both
single and multi-channel p10.

Actually, most of our users do already have liquid handling robots when they
buy an OT-One, and our machine is often labs' first form of automation. Users
like this have had lots of success porting their manual protocols onto the OT-
One, and you can see the different choices already available for users to
download and run on Mix.Bio.

I agree we could use a lot more info on our website, and we are working on it.
Till then, happy to talk more details if your interested, just email
info@opentrons.com and we can set up a time to talk.

Thanks!

Will

~~~
willcanine
woops -- should say 'most of our users do NOT already have liquid handling
robots...' sorry

------
willcanine
Happy to talk to anyone about our robot! Currently have 51 machines in labs
around the world doing things from serial dilutions to Gibson assembly and
shipping more every week. Email info@opentrons.com to get in touch

~~~
rebootthesystem
Fix your website. It is unusable on an iPad. Information quality trumps
hipster trendy UI crap any day of the week. This is particularly true if you
are actually trying to sell something.

People want information. Lots of it. Pictures and videos. Downloadable PDF's
and specifications. They could not care less about these dumb fucking trends
that make websites impossible to use.

Sorry. There's just too much of this crap out there. If you understand sales
you know this is precisely NOT what your website should be about. Your web
developer is costing you sales.

~~~
mtmail
From the HN guidelines "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-
to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity."

What I mean to say is your comment about a UI that can be improved would have
worked without the words 'crap' and 'dumb fucking'.

~~~
rebootthesystem
The words you picked out of context were not aimed at that OP's site.

Profanity is not equivalent to lack of civility. Some of the most well-spoken
people have been some of the most profane and brutal in human history. For
example, I wonder if Hitler ever cursed in his speeches.

Anyhow, the flowery language was intended to impress upon the owner of this
website that there's an urgent need to fix this website because, well, it
won't sell very much as it is.

Too many entrepreneurs think selling is done by showing what you make
(hardware, software, website). No, it isn't.

I was in that camp twenty-five years ago. I thought I knew how to sell the
wonderful hardware I worked so hard to develop. To my credit, I had the good
sense to give myself an "F" during a self evaluation of my ability to sell.
And that was followed by working hand-in-hand with our first resellers for a
full year.

We'd go show the hardware to potential customers and they'd let me do the
pitch. After the visit we'd stop at Starbucks for a post-mortem. For the first
four to six months they often started with "why the FUCK did you say...".

After a year I got to the point where I could sell our products almost without
uttering a word about them during sales visits. I graduated.

Anyhow, from a salesmanship perspective this website is terrible. All it is
good for is to mimic current trends in web styling, yet, from a sales
perspective it will be horribly ineffective.

When you are trying to sell a product being clever, trendy or sexy seldom
works. Having a beautiful woman eat a burger half naked on a pickup truck
isn't going to make me want to go to that restaurant. It's a spectacle. It has
shock value. I'll probably watch it. But it does nothing to position the
product in a useful manner, compel me to learn more and consider buying it.

Building a website loaded with cool and trendy crap is having a website loaded
with cool and trendy crap. It is NOT building a website that rocks at
salesmanship.

Some of the ugliest ads and websites rock at selling. A/B testing often
reveals incredible surprises about how people respond to what they see online.

The OP needs to pay a sales consultant to help them redo the entire thing. It
won't be trendy, but it will sell.

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MCRed
I'm interested in something like this, but for a different application.

I want to mix up stuff like beard oil or vape juice. Interested in delivering
between 0.1ml and 10ml of solution (Eg: 0.1ml of 100mg/ml nicotine, 10ml or
vegetable glycerine, or 0.5ml of an essential oil, 10ml of hemp seed oil.)

I never could find a reliable way to deliver small amounts of fluid
repeatedly.

In this type of work its the same fluid going to each place so you don't have
contamination. I would to produce an arbitrary mix from, say, 40 containers of
different fluids.

Would love any suggestions.

I looked at peristaltic pumps and all that, never could find a cost effective
solution--- closest I came was syringes attached to linear actuators, and
maybe an optical system to observe the position of the syringe to ensure it
was the correct distance. OR possibly a squeezing assembly with disposable
plastic pipettes, but that seemed imprecise.

I put the idea on the back burner as a result.

~~~
willcanine
Hi - our robot is great for your application. Send me an email
info@opentrons.com and we can talk more about it. We have talked to a number
of people interested in the same thing.

