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Opentrons raises $10M for scientists to automate lab experiments with robotics

venturebeat.com

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Re: Opentrons raises $10M for scientists to automate lab experiments with robotics

#11

Post by willcanine »

skosuri wrote: post #7

Congrats! I want a OT-2! When does it ship? Also, when's the 96-well plate head coming?

Thank you! Would love to work with you! We are already shipping OT-2 robots, and right now with the amount of demand we have there is a 6 week lead time (though it is increasing fast).

The 96-well head wont be an addition to this robot because it would make it too top heavy and risk tipping it over -- best we can fit on this guy is the 8-channel pipette already available. We'll start considering things like a 96-well head when we decide to move up-market and start making bigger robots, but for now we are very happy to be making lab robots accessible to labs with smaller budgets that today have to do all their pipetting by hand.

Re: Opentrons raises $10M for scientists to automate lab experiments with robotics

#13

Post by willcanine »

Thriptic wrote: post #8
sigstoat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The software looks more polished... but not caught up the industry yet. most industry software in this area is garbage. i've seen the tecan software in operation; those folks should be embarrassed. > Definitely catering to the DIY crowd. i'm tempted to get one and see if we can't get it into production. the up front cost is only a bit more than an annual service contract for a tecan machine which doesn't do much mo…

My god I couldn't agree more. I used a Tecan liquid handler for years and wow did I hate it. It was very easy to fuck something up or make a change in the software without an error being thrown or the user being notified; the GUI was absolutely a black box to new users and I had to write my own manual to walk labmates through what to do to run known protocols; there was 0 attempt at optimizing movements to save time;…

This is exactly the pain we are trying to help in the lab -- your story is all too common!

It is crazy to me that we are the first lab automation company to bring best practices of consumer tech UX and engineering to the wet lab, but its true. We're the first to use continuous integration / delivery, Agile development, usability testing, easy APIs / DSLs -- the list goes on. Would love to work with you and restore your faith in what lab automation can be!

Re: Opentrons raises $10M for scientists to automate lab experiments with robotics

#14

Post by willcanine »

rubidium wrote: post #3

For those who are un-aware of laboratory automation, this is not a new industry. There are MANY automated liquid handlers on the market. Beckman, Eppendorf, Hamilton, and Tecan are the larger names. What's new is the way Opentrons is offering value: thru low-cost hardware and open-source software. With the OT2 they ditched the use of a manual pipetters with dedicated 8 and 1 channel pipetters (a good move). The softw…

Thanks! Through user research we learned that most labs dont have robots today because 1. they are too expensive and 2. they dont have space in their lab for the huge machines currently available. Thats why we focused on low-cost and compact; the OT-2 is designed to fit on 1/2 of a standard lab bench so biologists can work alongside their robot.

OT-One was deff for the DIY crowd and there are lots of great hacks folks have done on it with our open API and hardware like plasmotron.org or this Alexa integration: https://youtu.be/s4WgCs-tH3o

On the other hand, the OT-2 is designed for the mainstream biologist, the folks that dont want to have to write code or hack hardware, just want something plug-and-play to do their pipetting for them. So far in our usability tests and for beta users, its working! :)

Re: Opentrons raises $10M for scientists to automate lab experiments with robotics

#16

Post by kayhi »

willcanine wrote: post #13
Thriptic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My god I couldn't agree more. I used a Tecan liquid handler for years and wow did I hate it. It was very easy to fuck something up or make a change in the software without an error being thrown or the user being notified; the GUI was absolutely a black box to new users and I had to write my own manual to walk labmates through what to do to run known protocols; there was 0 attempt at optimizing movements to save time;…

This is exactly the pain we are trying to help in the lab -- your story is all too common! It is crazy to me that we are the first lab automation company to bring best practices of consumer tech UX and engineering to the wet lab, but its true. We're the first to use continuous integration / delivery, Agile development, usability testing, easy APIs / DSLs -- the list goes on. Would love to work with you and restore yo…

We're a distributor to many start ups and biotech companies and it's so refreshing to hear this area being taken on!

Re: Opentrons raises $10M for scientists to automate lab experiments with robotics

#17

Post by [deleted] »

willcanine wrote: post #13
Thriptic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My god I couldn't agree more. I used a Tecan liquid handler for years and wow did I hate it. It was very easy to fuck something up or make a change in the software without an error being thrown or the user being notified; the GUI was absolutely a black box to new users and I had to write my own manual to walk labmates through what to do to run known protocols; there was 0 attempt at optimizing movements to save time;…

This is exactly the pain we are trying to help in the lab -- your story is all too common! It is crazy to me that we are the first lab automation company to bring best practices of consumer tech UX and engineering to the wet lab, but its true. We're the first to use continuous integration / delivery, Agile development, usability testing, easy APIs / DSLs -- the list goes on. Would love to work with you and restore yo…

[deleted]

Re: Opentrons raises $10M for scientists to automate lab experiments with robotics

#18

Post by the-dude »

willcanine wrote: post #10
rubidium wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will/have you open source the hardware for OT2 like you did for OT1 ( https://github.com/Opentrons/otone_hardware )?

yes, we will be open-sourcing the hardware, though not in quite the same way as with the OT-One. All the OT-One parts are off the shelf, 3D printed, or laser-cut, so putting all the files on github makes a lot of sense. But the OT-2 is a lot of custom parts injection molded / extruded / CNC'd by our production team in Shenzhen, and it is a lot harder to both share those designs on our end, and to make anything out of…

Sounds like no.

Re: Opentrons raises $10M for scientists to automate lab experiments with robotics

#19

Post by sigstoat »

PoachedSausage wrote: post #9
sigstoat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The software looks more polished... but not caught up the industry yet. most industry software in this area is garbage. i've seen the tecan software in operation; those folks should be embarrassed. > Definitely catering to the DIY crowd. i'm tempted to get one and see if we can't get it into production. the up front cost is only a bit more than an annual service contract for a tecan machine which doesn't do much mo…

A lot of software in science and engineering R&D seems pretty bad. Even the firmware/user interfaces to some instruments are terrible, like ease of operation is an afterthought. Then you have giant turds like LabVIEW by National Instruments who really should know better. I really don't know why it is so popular.

> A lot of software in science and engineering R&D seems pretty bad. Even the firmware/user interfaces to some instruments are terrible, like ease of operation is an afterthought.

nobody shops for a $250k scientific instrument on the basis of the control software, unfortunately. it's all about the machine's resolution or speed or something compared to the competitors.

or even just what you're familiar with from your previous laboratory.

> Then you have giant turds like LabVIEW by National Instruments who really should know better. I really don't know why it is so popular.

they dump a lot of money into undergrad lab/education. or did, anyways. and 20 years ago if you just wanted to pull some one-off analog sensors into a PC for an industrial process (without being an EE), NI hardware/software might very well have been the cheapest/easiest/fastest way to do it.

Re: Opentrons raises $10M for scientists to automate lab experiments with robotics

#20

Post by skosuri »

willcanine wrote: post #11
skosuri wrote: post #7

Congrats! I want a OT-2! When does it ship? Also, when's the 96-well plate head coming?

Thank you! Would love to work with you! We are already shipping OT-2 robots, and right now with the amount of demand we have there is a 6 week lead time (though it is increasing fast). The 96-well head wont be an addition to this robot because it would make it too top heavy and risk tipping it over -- best we can fit on this guy is the 8-channel pipette already available. We'll start considering things like a 96-well…

OK. Will put in an order soon. Sri
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