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Created heated lid, buttons, and set up cycling

A project log for Open Source Thermal Cycler

A thermal cycler currently being developed for use as a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) machine

katherina-baranovaKatherina Baranova 08/19/2014 at 01:160 Comments

We wrote in the code for the cycling, buttons, and heated lid at this stage. We used a switch case to define the three cases for our cycler: heating to temperature 1, cooling to temperature 2, and then heating to temperature 3. We used 95 degrees C, 55 degrees C, and 75 degrees C for our temperatures.

At this stage, the thermal block did not hold or stop after a predetermined number of cycles. It just went to our defined temperatures. It displayed the temperature on the screen but nothing else.

We set up the heated lid and buttons now as well. We looped Nichrome wire through a bread board and wrapped it in heat resistant tape. We set up the thermistor using this tutorial: https://learn.adafruit.com/thermistor/using-a-thermistor

And this temperature table: http://reprap.org/wiki/Thermistor

We set up the buttons using this tutorial: http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/lesson5.html

We also set up a buzzer at this time that would alert us if the temperature went above 100, for debugging purposes.

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