Team:BHSF ND/Hardware

Safety

Index
1. Inspiration
2. Purpose
3. Description
4. Parts
5. Software
6. Future plans
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Hardware

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Inspiration

The primary purpose of our design of the detector is to simulate our project in a real factory environment. Due to the reason that it is impossible for our team to test our project in an actual factory manufacturing process, we designed this detector to prove our hypothesis. We put our bistable system inside the Sample Holder part. According to the operating principle of the detector, if the light can be reemitted after absorbed in the Sample Holder by the sample cell containing the fluorescent property, the TCS3200D optical sensor may display the data. Analyzing data in the TCS3200D, the alarm sound made by the speaker may prove our assumption.

Purpose

Our team designed this hardware to come up with a simple and portable Fluorescence Detector by using GFP. It is very light and convenient for people to bring it to various locations and use them on their projects whenever they want. With these factors, our team can take it to different factories to evaluate our project on their strains. It can help us improve and validate our design and test results.

Description

The graph displayed above shows the hardware designed by our team. Following is a detailed description of our hardware.

1. the LED (light-emitting diode) placed at the top of the detector emits excitation light that has a wavelength of about 480 nm. There are two separate black baffles in the middle of the hardware to block the unnecessary light. There is a small gap between two black baffles, playing a role to transmit a very thin beam to our sample cell below.

2. The beam penetrates the transparent sample cell, and the sample cell containing the fluorescent property absorbs the excitation light while emitting green fluorescence of about 516 nm. A TCS3200D optical sensor, which can detect Blue, Green, and Red optical characteristics, is placed next to the sample cell.

3. The sensor can recognize the RGB optical characteristics of the light with high precision. After it receives the green fluorescent beam from the sample cell, TCS3200D may detect the surge of green optical characteristics and analyze the fluorescence by calibration.

4. The sensor sends signals to the Micro Control Unit (MCU) and is processed.

5. The analyzed data transmit via Bluetooth to our computer monitor.

6. The data of fluorescence is revealed on our designed software.

Parts

①LED stimulator(Light-emitting diode): a light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor light source that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons.

②Lens: a transmissive optical device that focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. In our detector, we use lens as an optical device that focus our light beam.

③Sample holder: our plasmid with bistable system.

④Power source: a source of power.

⑤Light sensor: we use a TCS3200D optical sensor for our light sensor. The sensor can recognize the RGB optical characteristics of the light with high precision. A TCS3200D is a Color Sensor Auto Power Down 8-SOIC (0.154", 3.90mm Width).

⑥Microprocessor (MCU): a controlling unit of a micro-computer, fabricated on a small chip capable of performing ALU (Arithmetic Logical Unit) operations and communicating with the other devices connected to it.

⑦ Bluetooth: a wireless technology standard for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances using short-wavelength.

Software

In order to better use the hardware to measure, we have specially designed the Bluetooth system and the corresponding computer software for our hardware. In the process of measuring the fluorescence brightness, real-time measurement data is transmitted to our software for display via Bluetooth devices. The fluorescence value of the website has a constant multiple relationship with the flow cytometer and the microplate reader. The real-time fluorescence intensity can be measured by hardware through conversion.

Future plans

We decide to design our hardware and spread it so that other teams can also order our hardware to complete the corresponding inspections in their teams’ projects. However, due to the rush of time, our team came up with a wonderful idea and made a sample for our team’s project. However, we have not produced and used it on a large scale, and there are some problems with the quality of the products.

What we need to do:

--Appearance: improve the appearance of our hardware, making it more appealing.

--Accessibility of software: we will design a software that can access from both phones and computers.

--Material: We need to improve our material to increase our hardware’s quality.

--Convenience: it’s better to be more portable and light for people to take and use it whenever they want.

--Ability: it sometimes have some little problems and cannot work stably, so we need to improve parts inside our hardware and guarantee its normal operation.

--Publication : We aimed to publicize our hardware and make it accessible for everyone who need this design.