I havn't heard of any amateurs or DIY'ers who created a fully functioning light-bulb PCR. Russel Durret had one and I re-created the circuit from it, but he never to my knowledge tested ramp times or ever completed a successful PCR. I havn't either. I have a "professional" build light-cycler I got off ebay, the Idaho Technology RapidCycler, and although it is a bit faster than the peltier machines I've tested it against, so far the peltiers seem to beat it out on amplification quality / concentration (only done 2 amplifications...not a great sample size). Though, this could be because I am not providing ample enough program times to account for the poorer heat transfer between plastic/air vs plastic/aluminum.
Dealing without heated lids kind of sucks because pipetting mineral oil is annoying, and the OpenPCR offers that I believe. You could get an older peltier based machine and hope it worked off ebay (sometimes it is cheap enough to take the gamble), but for newer PCR machines with heated lids that really work, you may even find the price comparable to OpenPCR.
From observing OpenPCR over the past few years, but never actually using one, I'd say they did a nice job filling the complete void that existed for a relatively easy to assemble plug-n-go machine. Are there areas where one could improve upon it? Sure; price, ramp time, sample #, size. But you could argue anything and everything in existence could be improved upon, and that's how progress is made.
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