Bioreactor Construction

For our project, we made a custom illumination device to test different light conditions for LovTAP activation and for use with the melanopsin channel pathway.

Calculations

In Strickland's 2008 paper, it's mentioned that they used 8000 mcd LEDs from [http://www.theledlight.com theledlight.com], with 20º viewing angle and 468 nm at 3.4 V. We bought the same sort of LED from [http://www.ledstar.ch/10-Stueck-LowCost-LED-5mm-blau-13000mcd-ultrahell-unsortiert ledstar.ch]].

Strickland et al mention also that 200 W

Testing and Programming the Arduino

The first step was to get the Arduino microcontroller up and running, load some simple programs and test out a few circuits on a breadboard. You can find out more about the Arduino open-source electronics prototyping platform and download the Arduino development environment [http://www.arduino.cc/ here].

Preparing the Components

We painted black the the part holding the LEDs to prevent light from one row leaking into another.

Soldering and Assembly

Here we are creating a permanent version of the circuit on a breadboard with some solder.

And now the Arduino is connected to the device.

Testing

The device works!

This is a video of our device lighting up some LEDs assigned by us with a simple program.