Teaching Electronics and Laboratory Automation Using Microcontroller Boards

Abstract

Modern microcontroller boards offer the analytical chemist a powerful and inexpensive means of interfacing computers and laboratory equipment. The availability of a host of educational materials, compatible sensors, and electromechanical devices make learning to implement microcontrollers fun and empowering. This article describes the advantages of using Arduino microcontroller boards for lab automation. It also includes lesson plans and exercises for teaching how to use them in the analytical chemistry curriculum. Two of these exercises include acquiring data from simple spectrometers and the control of a thermal cycler for PCR. The versatility of these devices will make them another important tool in the analytical chemist's toolkit.

Automation in the Life Science Research Laboratory

“…The number of automation development tools, components and virtual training options available to research laboratories continues to broaden, increasing their capability to develop low-cost solutions to labour intensive processes. The advent of affordable 3D printing modalities (Jones et al, 2011;Zluhan et al, 2016;Capel et al, 2018), off the shelf actuators and readily programable microcontrollers (Mabbott, 2014;Kim et al, 2015;Wong et al, 2018) has given research laboratories the ability to produce componentry that can then be assembled, controlled and automated all for a relatively low cost (Courtemanche et al, 2018;Needs et al, 2019;Barthels et al, 2020). Open source designs and software have an important enabling effect for researchers who may not have engineering or programming expertise.…”

Prototyping Instruments for the Chemical Laboratory Using Inexpensive Electronic Modules

“…Arduino MCBs were successfully implemented to acquire data from simple optical spectrometers and detectors for chromatography instruments . For instance, an external 16‐bit analog‐to‐digital converter can be coupled with the Arduino MCB to achieve adequate data acquisition.…”

Prototypen‐Entwicklung von Instrumenten für das chemische Laboratorium mithilfe von preiswerten Elektronikmodulen

“…Arduino‐MCBs wurden für die Datenaufnahme von einfachen optischen Spektrometern und Detektoren von Chromatographen eingesetzt. So kann z.…”