Instrumentation

Our device

We have constructed a mechanical rotary device that is turned by an arduino-controlled motor to 'sense' from 6 different cuvettes that can be placed in the device and then left for automated detection. The arduino is also connected to two light sensors, one supplied with a blue and the other with an orange filter. The ratio of the light intensity at blue and orange frequencies can be measured to determine the strength of output signal from the bacillus.

The hardware is coupled to a graphical user interface (GUI) that was designed using wxpython. Python is particularly useful as the communication with the arduino microcontroller is done using serial programming, for which python has standard libraries. However, before any communication takes place between the user and the device, the arduino is loaded to perform the basic functions which are written in C++. The arduino and python were chosen for the ease of use and open platform. Also, the arduino is cheap and python is free!