Re: [DIYbio] Re: Electronic requirements for redesign of Arduino PCR thermal cycler

It was built for high school students.

## Jonathan Cline  ## jcline@ieee.org  ## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223  ########################    

On 3/24/15 5:29 AM, Brian Degger wrote:

Agree with both of you. 

If you are hard core electrical engineer, you might use something else, there is no need for a requirement 1.

 

But on the other hand, I would have to say where would 3d printing be without arduino?   

Remember Arduino is just a breakout board for atmel mega(and arm and many more including texas instrument chips if you want) + an programing environment/ide.

Who was it built for? Electrical engineers? Nup, it was for people like cathal and me, who want to tinker, and to enable designers to make hardware prototypes and readymades.

If you get further down the line, its likely you design your own pcb board with what you want, keep the chip, and away you go.

Brian   

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 10:30 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:

That's all well and good, but putting together a thermal cycler with an Arduino requires no shields, less and more reasonable code, and no additional equipment (programmers, etcetera) over and above the Arduino and USB. It requires an AC solid state relay, LM35 sensor, a heat gun and a computer cooling fan.

Telling people to use PICs because they'll save €5 on the cost of the chip, even if it wastes days of their time because the community is smaller and more techie and purist, is a bit useless. People want to get stuff done, and people are rarely without the €5 needed to grab an arduino, copy/paste some ubiquitous code, and get stuff done.

On 24/03/15 10:05, Jonathan Cline wrote:

It is several x more expensive as a building block, similar to the Lego
analogy -- and always needs to add more pieces.  It is not for real
("college undergrad level") projects.   The household name comes from
the marketing push and the plethora of required 3rd party pieces --
which makes money for those other companies (including the kit
suppliers, like Ada), who also do more marketing, and so on.   The
lameness of Arduino needing shields which boost business for kit
suppliers and make it a well-known product placement in catalogs is no
justification for using it in an engineering design.  "There's a reason
xx is a household name" could apply to many xx's which are similarly
worse choices.  Unfortunately the projects built with Arduino are also
falsely labelled "diy low cost" when in fact they are not at all low
cost in comparison and others are also led astray.  When a lot of script
kiddies talk volumes about a technology, it does not mean the technology
is beneficial.  A lot of the talk is simply confusion or from lack of
education.  Technology which works does not get as much verbiage in
comparison precisely because it "just works" once the initial learning
curve is overcome.

The software application which allows cutting & pasting the code you
mention into your projects likely works on any number of better hardware
kits since it is in a high level language.

So I repeat my recommendation and have improved it slightly --

Requirement #1:
   * Sell the Arduino on ebay.

## Jonathan Cline
## jcline@ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
########################

On 3/24/15 1:17 AM, Cathal Garvey wrote:

Arduino is fine and highly productive for beginners compared to PIC
whatevers. There's a reason Arduino is a household name and
PIC-number-number-number-number is not.

I've built functioning thermal cyclers on Arduinos without issue, and
with easily reasonable code (although I was using a pre-written
finite-state-machine library, the availability of which is just more
reason to use a widely used platform like Arduino).

On 24/03/15 02:38, Jonathan Cline wrote:

Requirement #1:
  * Throw away the Arduino.


I am going to add to the FAQ:
"Do not use Arduino for real projects.  It is like building an
automobile out of Legos and then expecting to actually drive it."


Also, fyi to Nathan.  LM339 is a comparator not an opamp so it is not a
good signal buffer.  Use an opamp.  See my article in Biocoder #6.


## Jonathan Cline
## jcline@ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
########################


On Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at 4:49:50 AM UTC-8, Andy Morgan wrote:



    So, I've slightly redesigned the Arduino PCR thermal cycler
(http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-PCR-thermal-cycler-for-under-85/?ALLSTEPS

<http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-PCR-thermal-cycler-for-under-85/?ALLSTEPS>)

    to make it a bit better, by replacing the two wiremound resistors
    (100watts) with a cartridge heater (300watts)
(http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Cartridge-Heater-3-8-Diameter-3-2-Length-220VAC-300W-/380898256650?pt=AU_B_I_Electrical_Test_Equipment&hash=item58af4e270a

<http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Cartridge-Heater-3-8-Diameter-3-2-Length-220VAC-300W-/380898256650?pt=AU_B_I_Electrical_Test_Equipment&hash=item58af4e270a>).



    But the thing is: I have ZERO experience with electronics, and I
    don't know whether the cartridge heater will require too much power
    from the Arduino board or power supply, and all the explanations
    I've found on the internet seem to go WAY over my head.

    Does anybody know whether the cartridge heater will work?

    Any help would be greatly appreciated.

--

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