Sep 26, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
With the end of September approaching, we're on track to soon assemble and send off our first batch of Pioreactors — and it also marks the end of my internship! In this blog post, I'll discuss my experiences over the summer and announce some fun projects we've completed in the last few weeks.
Aug 29, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
One of the greatest strengths of the Pioreactor its modularity; both on the hardware and software sides. Previously, you've seen how we can add physical pieces like pumps and LEDs to customize your Pioreactor. To use these pieces (or even change how we use basic actions), we can create and install plugins!
Jul 18, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
Inspired by this paper by Knutson et al. (2018), we created a new temperature automation that cycles temperature as a sine wave between 30°C and 40°C over 24 hours. With this new automation, and in our expanded Pioreactor/turbidostat system, we grew some yeast over the weekend – and the findings are quite interesting!
Jul 07, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
We've been working with a cluster of prototype Pioreactors with slight build modifications, but we have settled on an optimized design. As such, we've recently updated our documentation site to include a new hardware setup section in our User Guide. Check it out!
Jun 17, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
We’ve been 3D printing many tools to help us assemble all these Pioreactors as we prepare to launch our first batch. Things like cutting circles into thermal material, assembling caps with tubes/grommets, and even aligning the spinning PCB all use 3D printed tools we designed! You can say our Pioreactors are almost artisanal.
Jun 10, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
Hi! My name is Kelly, and I’m the new hire here at Pioreactor! I’m a recent graduate from the University of Waterloo with a BSc, and I’ll be working on the experiment repository, while also making some blog posts to document the experience.
Apr 15, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
As we start to take a more critical eye at our project, we are revisiting parts of the Pioreactor that started as temporary hacks, but now need to be updated. Two really positive changes that we've decided on are our cable assemblies. Let me explain.
Apr 04, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
We are making steady progress on the Pioreactor. Some small tweaks are left to the electronics, so we expect one, maybe two more PCB development runs. We've been procuring parts for manufacturing from suppliers for an initial run of 250 units for late 2022 (plus extras for spare parts and replacements).
Jan 31, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
Bioreactors have an advantage of being able to closely control an environment for microbes. Often, we wish for a bioreactor to precisely control a single, important variable, and we observe how the microbes respond. We can even push this variable to an extreme value - to an environment that the microbes are not familiar with, with interesting results.
