Open-Source Microcontrollers for Science - Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs - page 50

CHAPTER 4
Open-Source Microcontrollers
for Science
How to Use, Design Automated Equipment With
and Troubleshoot
Abstract
An open-source single-board microcontroller, like the Arduino, acts as a light-weight brain for scientific
automation-related tasks. The open-source microcontroller environment simplifies the task of customiz-
ing controls for your particular project as it is both extremely flexible and relatively easy to learn and
use for beginners. An open-source microcontroller can sense the environment by receiving input from a
long list of sensors and then based on rules you set affect its surroundings by controlling a similarly long
list of outputs (e.g. lights, motors, and other actuators). This chapter discusses how to use, design and
troubleshoot scientific tools using open-source microcontrollers. We will explore in detail an example
system of an open-source environmental chamber, which is used to control temperature and humidity
for a wide range of experiments that cuts across many disciplines. Without any previous electronics ex-
perience, you should be able to understand the basics of open-source microcontrollers after reading this
chapter and get well into a project of your own in an afternoon.
Keywords
Arduino; Controls; Electronics prototyping; Electronics; Environmental chamber; Microcontrol-
ler; Open-source hardware; Open-source microcontrollers
4.1 Introduction
As we strive to do more and beter experiments in less time, much of today's modern scientiic
equipment demands some level of automation. In the past, automating even the most concep-
tually simple tasks was a significant undertaking and the time investment was only justified for
tasks that needed to be repeated many times (e.g. factory automation of production to make
millions of the same product—for example, test tubes). As low-cost basic electronics became
more widespread, automation became possible for a widening collection of scientific tasks;
however, the skills necessary to create an automated scientific tool were often not worth the in-
vestment of a researcher in a much different field. Scientific equipment companies have histor-
ically filled the void, which resulted in proprietary automated scientific research tools becom-
ing widely available (e.g. an automated pipeting system). These are the tools that we are all