Repurposing old bioreactors

Hardware, PWM, and Optics
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Hi all, I’m planning to repurpose some old bioreactors using the pioreactor software. The ultimate goal is to be able to control parameters such as DO, pH and temperature - so that I don’t have to rely on the manufacturer’s hardware/software anymore. I’ve already got the sensors and controllers laying around, but I was wondering how to implement these in the pioreactor software.

  1. Is there someone who managed to connect pH and/or DO sensors from Hamilton and Mettler Toledo? The sensor outputs an analog signal, which I guess should be convertible to digital. The idea is then to calibrate this signal in the pioreactor UI. However, I’m not sure how to connect the sensors to the RPi, considering that you need an adapter for the specific connection (VarioPin, K8, …).
  2. The same goes for my red-y mass flow controller, which supports both digital (ModBus RTU) and analog interfaces. How would you be able to control its setpoint?

If someone is interested in collaborating and/or sharing ideas, or if there’s already a community around somewhere, please let me know!

Cheers!

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Yo yo lets have a call we’ve largely solved this. Change-Bio repositories · GitHub

I have it running with dupont wires and ADCs plugged in via i2c right now but want to move to modbus and ethernet for a bit more robustness.

Short answer on cables is that unfortunately I think you’ll have to buy the official cables and transmitters (we got them second hand) but then it’s really easy to connect to pioreactor.

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Sent a DM.