After our great workshops with Mitch Altman near Lausanne at Hackuarium
and at FIXME/FabLab Renens
(and wonderful experiences turning off TVs with him in the city, even through windows!), we hope to invite more international participants and swiss colleagues to join in on our epi-fluor builds of the OpenFlexure microscope, as planned and kindly funded by GOSH! For the initial inspiring workshops, we had just 5 of us at Hackuarium, but at least 23 (including 5 kids) participated at the bigger workshop in the Saturday, and I was even able to ‘make’ a real attempt hack peace with LEDs ! (LOL)
At the moment, as mentioned during the JOGS Open Science Hardware track presentation, the sourcing of the FLUOTAR objectives for epifluorescence is still a challenge, but we already have a couple of the high res RaspberryPi cameras and have begun the 3D prints. We hope to get everything together, and initially compare the delta stage to the latest v7alpha2 hi-res OpenFlexure designs (thanks to @julianstirling for his recommendation to try this, rather than our initial plan of doing 3 the same!), and then get the best in action. Now, with this post, we want to extend our call for others to join in for the R&D of the cheek cell chip and the actual builds, not only here in Switzerland, but together virtually for other interested people! (The budget includes some train fares for those not too far away… =) ) Help us open source DNA damage detection! There are many more challenges ahead, for instance: How can we modify the current stage into a millifluidic device for the comet assay? Hoping to fix dates in September for the builds! Here is a some more info. Please let us know if you are interested… (and write us at hello@hackuarium.ch)
Working still to blur the kids faces on more footage from the workshops, and make a vlog as promised… =P
Our community lab’s water quality work around Montreux Bay is also taking some energy - the Jazz is on now ! =)
Wish I could be there…