PyLabRobot 0.1.4

A hardware agnostic platform for liquid handling

PyLabRobot

Docs | Forum | Installation | Getting started

What is PyLabRobot?

PyLabRobot is a hardware agnostic, pure Python library for liquid handling robots.

PyLabRobot provides a layer of general-purpose abstractions over robot functions, with various device drivers for communicating with different kinds of robots. Right now we only have drivers for Hamilton and Opentrons robots, but we will soon have drivers for many more. The two Hamilton drivers are Venus, which is derived from the PyHamilton library, and STAR, which is a low-level firmware interface. The Opentrons driver is based on Opentrons Python API. We also provide a simulator which plays the role of a device driver but renders commands in a browser-based deck visualization.

Here's a quick example showing how to move 100uL of liquid from well A1 to A2 using firmware on Hamilton STAR (this will work with any operating system!):

from pylabrobot import LiquidHandler
from pylabrobot.liquid_handling.backends import STAR
from pylabrobot.liquid_handling.resources import STARLetDeck

lh = LiquidHandler(backend=STAR(), deck=STARLetDeck())
lh.setup()
lh.load_layout("hamilton-layout.json")

lh.pickup_tips(lh.get_resource("tips")["A1:H8"])
lh.aspirate(lh.get_resource("plate")["A1"], volume=100)
lh.dispense(lh.get_resource("plate")["A2"], volume=100)
lh.return_tips()

To run the same procedure on an Opentrons, switch out the following lines:

- from pylabrobot.liquid_handling.backends import STAR
- from pylabrobot.liquid_handling.resources import STARLetDeck
+ from pylabrobot.liquid_handling.backends import OpentronsBackend
+ from pylabrobot.liquid_handling.resource import OTDeck

- lh = LiquidHandler(backend=STAR(), deck=STARLetDeck())
+ lh = LiquidHandler(backend=OpentronsBackend(), deck=OTDeck())

- lh.load_layout("hamilton-layout.json")
+ lh.load_layout("opentrons-layout.json")

Resources

Documentation

docs.pylabrobot.org

• Installation
• Getting Started
• Contributing
• API Reference

Support

• forums.pylabrobot.org for questions and discussions.
• GitHub Issues for bug reports and feature requests.

Developed for the Sculpting Evolution Group at the MIT Media Lab