Team:EPF-Lausanne/Tools/Microfluidics/Tamagotchip

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(The Game)
 
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{{:Team:EPF-Lausanne/Templates/MicrofluidicsHeader|title=Tamagotchip: an online microfluidics game}}
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{{:Team:EPF-Lausanne/Templates/MicrofluidicsHeader|title=Tamagotchip: an online microfluidics demo}}
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In our quest to promote the use of microfluidics within the iGEM community, we decided to make iGEMers play with a chip from the comfort of their own labs. To do so, we built a web-controlled microfluidics setup, where users can view the chip live and control the valves from a web browser.
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In our quest to promote the use of microfluidics within the iGEM community, we decided to make iGEMers play with a chip from the comfort of their own labs. To do so, we built a web-controlled microfluidics setup, where users can view the chip live and control the valves from a web browser. For historical reasons (see bottom), it was called ''Tamagotchip'', a play on the words "Tamagotchi" and "chip".
[[File:EPFL-Muigi-schematic.png|700px|center|RAINBOW UNICORN!!!!111one]]
[[File:EPFL-Muigi-schematic.png|700px|center|RAINBOW UNICORN!!!!111one]]
''Outline of the web-controlled system: users see a live stream from our microscope, streamed through EPFL's Flash Media Server, and can control the chip from a standard form. AJAX requests, sent by the user, are relayed by the web server to an EasyDAQ card, which in turn controls the solenoid valves of our setup.''
''Outline of the web-controlled system: users see a live stream from our microscope, streamed through EPFL's Flash Media Server, and can control the chip from a standard form. AJAX requests, sent by the user, are relayed by the web server to an EasyDAQ card, which in turn controls the solenoid valves of our setup.''
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== The Game ==
== The Game ==
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The culmination of our system will be an on-chip "Tamagotchi":  the goal of the game is to take car of a ''C. Elegans'' larva living on the chip, feeding him with bacteria every now and then, and watch him grow into a fully grown adult. If you don't feed him, he'll go into ''dauer'' stage or, worse, die. This game will go live as soon as we can figure out how to actually see the larva with our microscope, after the wiki freeze. In the mean time, we'll gently introduce iGEMers to microfluidics, starting with simple flow experiments.
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The first demo showed flow and mixing of fluids on chip shaped like an iGEM logo. Two dyes, red and blue, as well as transparent liquid, could be injected into the chip from each side. We showed this demo in Amsterdam during the poster session, and to other groups at EPFL. The demo stayed live for half of September, and most of October, allowing other groups (mostly on campus) to try it out.
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The tamagotchi chip has higher channels than the MITOMI chips, to make space for the worm. It is designed with a cavernous main lounge (by nematode standards), with two adjacent dining rooms (or feeding chambers), to allow for example to feed the worm with slightly different food, and observe its preference.
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[[File:EPFL-TamagotchipScreenshot.png|600px|Our latest chip, demonstrating mixing of two dyes|center]]
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[[File:Worm chip.png|700x306px]]
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[http://www.megavideo.com/?v=OOADAQL9  Our latest attempt at mixing fluids on a chip]
== Hardware ==
== Hardware ==
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[[File:EPFL-Tamagotchip-setup.jpg|thumb|250px|The complete setup during a test-run.]]
[[File:EPFL-Tamagotchip-setup.jpg|thumb|250px|The complete setup during a test-run.]]
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The hardware is a relatively standard microfluidics setup, as described on the [[Team:EPF-Lausanne/Tools/Microfluidics/HowTo|how-to page]]. It has with two different pressure outputs, one with five manual twist valves and the other with twelve solenoid three-way valves. The solenoid valves are controlled by an EasyDAQ USB24mx relay card, connected by USB to a Thinkpad T43 running Ubuntu Linux 11.04. We wrote our own Python software to control the EasyDAQ.
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The hardware is a relatively standard microfluidics setup, as described on the [[Team:EPF-Lausanne/Tools/Microfluidics/HowTo|how-to page]]. It has two different pressure outputs, one with five manual twist valves and the other with twelve solenoid three-way valves. The solenoid valves are controlled by an EasyDAQ USB24mx relay card, connected by USB to a Thinkpad T43 running Ubuntu Linux 11.04. We wrote our own Python software to control the EasyDAQ.
The video stream comes from a our toy USB microscope (Celestron Deluxe Handheld Digital Microscope), connected to an Apple Mac Pro. The Mac encodes the video for live streaming through EPFL's Flash Media Server.
The video stream comes from a our toy USB microscope (Celestron Deluxe Handheld Digital Microscope), connected to an Apple Mac Pro. The Mac encodes the video for live streaming through EPFL's Flash Media Server.
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Video is streamed through EPFL's Flash streaming server. The video is transcoded live by ''Flash Media Encoder'' on a Mac Pro, to which the webcam microscope is connected.  
Video is streamed through EPFL's Flash streaming server. The video is transcoded live by ''Flash Media Encoder'' on a Mac Pro, to which the webcam microscope is connected.  
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== Older plans and origin of the name ==
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The culmination of our system was initially to be an on-chip "Tamagotchi":  the goal of the game is to take care of a ''C. Elegans'' larva living on the chip, feeding him with bacteria every now and then, and watch him grow into an  adult. If you didn't feed him, he would go into ''dauer'' stage or, worse, die. This game idea was abandoned shortly before the regional wiki freeze for two reasons: the worms are very hard to see under our cheap microscope, and they do not thrive in our kind of microfluidic chip. Instead, we used the setup as an educational tool, to demo microfluidics. The name stuck, though.
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The tamagotchi chip has higher channels than the MITOMI chips, to make space for the worm. It is designed with a cavernous main lounge (by nematode standards), with two adjacent dining rooms (or feeding chambers), to allow feeding of the worm with slightly different foods, to observe its preference.
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[[File:Worm chip.png|700x306px]]
{{:Team:EPF-Lausanne/Templates/Footer}}
{{:Team:EPF-Lausanne/Templates/Footer}}

Latest revision as of 12:57, 23 October 2011