Whoa!!
That is impressive. I do not even want to think about how many hours you put into this AWT.
I thought about building one and my idea was a circular design with the test vial and colorimeter in the center. The Syringe would travel on a fixed bar across the diameter. The reagents would be on stepper controlled carousel table that rotated the reagents to be inline with the Syringes support bar. Pinch solenoids would be used heavily to reduce the amount of peristaltic pumps needed.
My thinking was that circular would make it more compact and allow for more reagent bottles. The alignment problems with the syringe would be eliminated by a different reflective dot pattern under each reagents holder and a single fixed sensor underneath the the carousel to read the pattern. This would allow the Arduino to always know when a reagent was in alignment with the syringe and what it contained.
Another idea for alignment was to use the same colorimeter sensor for testing and have it do a 180 deg rotation using an RC servo that is under it in the stationary center. When the Reagents are being rotated on the carousel the colorimeter would be pointed outward and the inner edge of the rotating carousel would have little posts that are colored differently. When the right one is in line with the colorimeter it would stop rotating and then turn the sensor back towards the test vial.
Another thing that I liked about this idea was that it would increase the speed since tests that require two reagents would always have them be placed on opposite sides of the carousel and therefore no extra rotation would be needed, just the syringe moving across the bar with only L-M-R stops.
I know the reefbot Pro uses a similar system but they move the syringe in a circle instead of the reagents.
My idea was to eliminate some of the alignment issues and speed things up.
I was also toying with the idea of taking it even one step further with the though of a second inner carousel that has multiple test vials orbiting the colorimeter sensors in the fixed center. The idea was that while one test is waiting for the reagents to change color another vial would be moved into place so it could start another parameter test.
Anyway I have experience and know that going from idea to a working prototype is very very hard and seldom do things work out the way you planned.
That is impressive. I do not even want to think about how many hours you put into this AWT.
I thought about building one and my idea was a circular design with the test vial and colorimeter in the center. The Syringe would travel on a fixed bar across the diameter. The reagents would be on stepper controlled carousel table that rotated the reagents to be inline with the Syringes support bar. Pinch solenoids would be used heavily to reduce the amount of peristaltic pumps needed.
My thinking was that circular would make it more compact and allow for more reagent bottles. The alignment problems with the syringe would be eliminated by a different reflective dot pattern under each reagents holder and a single fixed sensor underneath the the carousel to read the pattern. This would allow the Arduino to always know when a reagent was in alignment with the syringe and what it contained.
Another idea for alignment was to use the same colorimeter sensor for testing and have it do a 180 deg rotation using an RC servo that is under it in the stationary center. When the Reagents are being rotated on the carousel the colorimeter would be pointed outward and the inner edge of the rotating carousel would have little posts that are colored differently. When the right one is in line with the colorimeter it would stop rotating and then turn the sensor back towards the test vial.
Another thing that I liked about this idea was that it would increase the speed since tests that require two reagents would always have them be placed on opposite sides of the carousel and therefore no extra rotation would be needed, just the syringe moving across the bar with only L-M-R stops.
I know the reefbot Pro uses a similar system but they move the syringe in a circle instead of the reagents.
My idea was to eliminate some of the alignment issues and speed things up.
I was also toying with the idea of taking it even one step further with the though of a second inner carousel that has multiple test vials orbiting the colorimeter sensors in the fixed center. The idea was that while one test is waiting for the reagents to change color another vial would be moved into place so it could start another parameter test.
Anyway I have experience and know that going from idea to a working prototype is very very hard and seldom do things work out the way you planned.
