Hey everyone,
Working on a Biomek i7, and wondering if anyone has a good technique for using scanned barcodes instead of static plate positions to specify source and destinations on a Transfer from File step. In the Transfer from File step, I can only use position ID’s (e.g. P1, P2, etc.) to specify Source and Destination Position. I’d like to be able to input a worklist with source and destination barcodes, and after scanning everything on the deck, have that be the determinant for where to pipette to and from. I assume I can use some scripting for this, but just want to see how others might be handling this. Thanks!
There may be more traction for something like this on the Automation Power Users Discord for i7s - feel free to join via the link here.
That being said, looks like someone solved this with a VBScript you can likely glean for yourself:
Copy of code here:
“Set step = CreateStep(“Biomek5.CreatePatternStep”)
Set vd = step.Dictionary
vd.File =“C:\Path\to\my\file.csv”
vd.MatchBarcode = true
vd.name = “myTestPattern”
'…
’ copy all other values from the original create pattern step
'…
Enqueue(step)”
If I’m interpreting this correctly that you’re interested in addressing labware via dynamic labware name instead of static labware position, you could probably also achieve this by renaming each plate as the barcode and reference the barcode in your csv, or renaming them something predictable based on barcode value and using that in your runtime steps.
There are also a few ways to modify a csv through script so you could collect barcodes, build the csv, then reference the barcode names instead of pos/dest. Or backwards like the csv being built referencing barcodes, then the instrument collects labware barcodes, and executes worklist using on-deck labware referenced by name/barcode