Hi! We have a high throughput method that we are developing that would be most efficient if we can somehow have 11 shakers on deck. We have a couple of STARs decked out with 8 HHSs at the moment, but was wondering if anyone here has gone more than 8. Or if it is even possible? I know a singular control box maxes out at 8.
Our eventual goal is to build a workcell for this process but for the immediate future we are trying to get this going on our STARs.
I wouldn’t see why you can’t. Treat each box independently. You might need some kind of scheduling software or SILA to control each box.
Just put the whole STAR on a shaker at this point
I wonder if Hamilton has a stacked shaking position that might be a good solution for you? Tecan has something like this called the TeMIO which would be a more condensed way to get your plate shaking depending on plate size and application.
Could you use three Incubator shakers?
Are you trying to have 8 different temperatures going on at once? I have four HHS on one of our Hamilton STARs, but I haven’t heard of 8 HHSs on one before.
With the default Venus driver and implementation you’re limited to 8 afaik.
There’s a selector on the bottom of the HHS that has to get set (1-8) which corresponds to the usedNode. Then all of the HHSs are communicated via USB through the first one (which is directly connected to the computer).
The Inheco control boxes have a DIP selector on the back that differentiates them which the HHS control boxes don’t have, allowing you to specify box 1, device 4 or box 2, device 5. This is all built into the Venus driver.
Doesn’t mean you can’t rig something up to run more than 8 HHSs (e.g. scheduling software/SILA already mentioned) but it’ll be a bit of effort probably if you wanted to do drag and drop venus blocks.
I don’t know about 11, but you may be able to do 10. The HHS have a dip switch on the bottom which you can set from 0 to 7. That (apart from the number of inlets) is why one HHS USB box can connect to 8 HHS, as each one gets their own identity via dip switch. Additionally, you can connect up to 2 HHS directly to a STAR, via TCC 1 and 2 (dip switche positions 5 and 6). You can initialize the box and the TCC connected devices with their own steps in the heater shaker library. I have not heard yet that these inits are mutually exclusive.
If that isn’t enough ot doesn’t work, your only option is an external solution, such as the Hamilton Incubator Shaker, or the Inheco single plate heater shakers. If you mix and match with 8 HHS and 3 Inheco devices you may even be able to get creative and place the Inhecos on deck so that you won’t need an iSWAP to load them.
This is 100% possible. Might be a little confusing for the Venus software. Each of those control boxes is registered with the system on a different ID. As others have said there are dip switches that address the individual HHS units connected to each box.
The tricky part will be getting the HHS library to properly communicate with all of them. Likely not impossible but not something I have personally explored.
Beyond that it would be a fairly trivial thing to create a small Python device server that just handles the control of the HHS units and would take the place of the Venus Library if this is a limitation.
Good luck!