Tl;DR: Device "drivers" for biology to enable permissionless Innovation innovation and the 'smart lab' of the future. Contact: open@biobright.org
Charles Fracchia, CEO, BioBright
Joel Dapello, Founding Engineering, BioBright
2. What to expect from this talk
1. What is a biolab & its equipment
2. How we reverse engineered two pieces of equipment
3. Call to arms: how YOU can help
18. Step 1: choose target carefully
Criteria:
● Easy to obtain
● Made by a leading brand (aka trusted)
● Elegant hack:
○ One that could be used by anyone
○ No irreversible modifications
19. Step 1: choose target carefully
Mettler Toledo / Rainin EDP3 Plus
✔ Purchasable on eBay
● around $50
? Remote control
● mentioned on product sheet, but no details
30. Step 5: make it easy for others to use
This hack enables actual remote control
Use the simple board to relay messages via XBee
You can even use encryption on the XBee link
37. Step 2: collect samples from the RS-232 port
Sending random characters through the port yields interesting behavior
● “N” → Dumps NVRAM
● “T” → Temperature packet
38. Step 3: reverse temperature encoding
Increase the temperature by known amounts and collect the temperature bytes
Still a bit cryptic, until...
39. Step 3: reverse temperature encoding
This is very likely to be linear !
Calculate the slope: m = ( 20221 - 20608 ) / ( -87 + 84 ) = 129
Get the Y-intercept: 31444 → 243.75ºC
Hmm, strange: 0 Kelvin → -243.15 not 243.75ºC
Temp ºC ≈ n/129 - 243.75
40. Step 4: make it easy to use for biologists
Complete with alerts & maintenance/downtime prediction algorithms !
43. These tools are essential in curing
disease, finding new drugs, etc.
44. What we need help with
Create a repository of open & interoperable device “drivers”
Create a framework to teach these skills to biologists and doctors
Recruit hackers & reverse engineers to this cause