The Pulsar Engineering Community Board

We just released our pub "AutoOpenRaman: Low-cost, automated Raman spectroscopy"

Our goal was to create something relatively inexpensive that allows us to collect Raman spectra from hundreds of algae samples automatically. Our modifications include a motorized XY stage, a Z stage, a built in neon calibration source, a programmable laser shutter, and a 4x microscope objective. Automated data acquisition is controlled through a custom GUI using Pycro-Manager.

More information on how we built it and the experiments we conducted can be found in the pub link below. We would love to hear your thoughts!
Link -> https://research.arcadiascience.com/pub ... release/1/

Thanks,
Ben
ben.braverman@arcadiascience.com

Congratulations for your work

May I ask what is the purpose of the shutter ? Can't you shine the laser non-stop ?

Thanks! That's a great question, the reason we added the shutter was to turn the laser off during time-lapse acquisitions of colonies. The Chlamydomonas are sensitive to light and keeping the laser on them for longer can increase their stress and effect their phenotypes. Rather than figuring out how to control the laser itself, we opted to just control a motor to physically block the laser light.