Opentrons Robotics makes accessible, open source lab robots for life scientists. Our mission is to provide the scientific community with a common platform to easily share protocols and reproduce each other's results. Our liquid handling robots automate experiments that would otherwise be done by hand, allowing our users to spend more time pursuing answers to some of the 21st century’s most important questions.
Opentrons’ flagship product, the OT-2, can be found in thousands of labs in more than 40 countries. Our community is automating the most common and time-consuming manual processes in molecular biology, including NGS library prep, DNA and RNA extraction, PCR setup, and protein purification.
Learn more about our approach to lab automation at opentrons.com/
Does Opentrons distance themselves from the misuse of qPCR fragment screening as a medical diagnostic tool? Could they have done more publicly to save us from the abuses of the last 4 years?
Hey Simon! The Flex is available to order now and the first units will ship to US customers in 2 months from now (end of August). You can contact us at info@opentrons.com to find out more and set up a chat with one of our Flex-perts.
Hi Marc! Great question. The tape holds down a piece of plastic that covers the now deprecated tip probe calibration sensors. These sensors at one point aided in the pipette offset calibration. We have since improved the flow of pipette offset calibration to no longer require these sensors.
Hey InquilineKea! Thanks for the question! We have our own protocol creation software (Python Protocol API here: docs.opentrons.com/v2/ and no-code Protocol Designer here: designer.opentrons.com/). But the Monomer team have built an integration with the OT-2 for automating cell culture. In fact, we recently held a joint webinar. Check out the recording here: insights.opentrons.com/webinar-06-22-23-monomer
Oh man I wish I had this when I first set up an OT-2, this is an excellent resource! Just using the pictures in the software were a bit confusing for this step.
Not the best for Canadian or any non-US market. We are a sequencing core facility and would like to do a constructive critical review: Opentrons is a fully remote company with HQ in New York, NY. All support is remotely done via email ONLY. So just in case you have an issue in the middle of a run, the turnaround time is from 2-3 weeks (could go more to months) Opentrons does not offer onsite protocol development services outside of the 50 states of the U.S. So if you are outside of the US and if you request for support, no matter how dire the situation is no one will come physically nor on a zoom call to resolve the issue. Your automated handler will be in dust for weeks or months till you can set it up again. Not best for a busy lab. One issue leads to another and it never gets fixed. Opentrons claim to “get the OT setup running in 10min” is questionable, it has been almost 2 years and so far we haven’t done a single run, the tip crashes, the offset is off, the protocols provided to calibrate your OT2 are given wrongly without knowing what consumables you have. Moreover, even when troubleshooting, despite giving all information, the redundancy in their queries is high that it is questionable if it is in their best interests to support Opentrons user, mostly superficially looking into issues. Opentrons do not check what consumables or protocols were paid for, you may have to repeatedly clarify what you have bought. Your territory manager, application specialist etc. are not Cc’ed in most emails, so you kind of don’t know who you are dealing with and this adds on the “complexity” that no one is assigned to your case. You will end repeating your issues over and over again to different people, due to their department being re-organized several times. To summarize, if you are outside of US, I would strongly suggest not to go for this, but go for a company that supports you locally, who can actually fix issues and who are transparent in emails. Automation should make life easier. If you really need things to move fast with a quick turnaround time for support, then Opentrons is not your best bet. You can reach out to the centre on more information and see it also, before you make a decision to buy Opentrons.
They do seem to have high turnover in staff. On the other hand I have been happy to run OT2 with my own protocols running on a Python terminal. Including tip offset.
Hi Dabiri, the Magnetic Module is perfect for clean-ups! Check out the documentation at the bottom of this page: opentrons.com/modules/magnetic-module And feel free to reach out to us at info@opentrons.com if you have further questions.
Hi Shawn, thanks for the question, and sorry for the delay! The OT-2 can certainly support this, but it would be great to get a few more details about your workflow and labware. Reach out to us at info@opentrons.com to set up a call with a product specialist.
Still waiting for liquid level tracking ;) This would make the OT2 a fully competitive liquid handling robot. I know, you can program workarounds, which I already did, but it would open up so many more users.
Definitely a helpful feature but not without drawbacks. The black Tecan tips always left me guessing as to how the pipetting was going. I like how you can clearly see through the tips and get a feel for how the pipetting is and what kind of residual etc.
Also custom modules for "edge cases" unlike some companies, the "Open Source" nature allows you to make custom "add ins" work with the system without having to reverse engineer / hack things.
I'm exited to see more content! (Also i think "The Thought Emporium" recently aquired one, so there will be even more content on it) There definetly aren't enough "Open Hardware Groups" out there, and you seem to have a great product that can save some "research assistant" (or just people tired of doing piles of pipetting) time. (And for a reasonable cost compared to some pharmecutical / high end lab device + open source so custom toolheads etc can be made) I'm kind of rambling, but keep up the good work!
The device seems bigger than i remember! I though in pictures/skimming websites that it was the size of a small 3d printer, but it's the size of a medium or so one. More "Real Estate" for modules and all that, just suprised me seeing a "human for scale" etc.
The pipetting performance displayed in this video absolutely does not meet or even exceeds the performance of more expensive units from Hamilton/Tecan/PerkinElmer/Eppendorf/... You show plenty of liquid sticking to the tip outside and residual liquid when discarding the tips. I have read your white paper on your claimed performance, this isn't it.
