History

Biomaker kits for training and prototyping

Biomaker has aimed to bring together organised training materials and electronic building blocks for design and assembly of bioinstrumentation. An important part of this has been to bring people together in seasonal workshops and challenges. These activities have been funded by funding from the UK Research Councils. Beginning in 2017, we have been collecting and distributing base kits to provide foundations for prototyping work.

The base kits have evolved from simple Arduino UNO boards with breadboard and components to higher powered microcontrollers with integrated sensor and actuator devices

Mk I Biomaker Kit

The Biomaker kit (2017) contained a large prototyping breadboard along with an Arduino UNO board and several kits of parts including Seeedstudio Grove boards and other discrete components, and a programmable touchscreen from 4D Systems.

Mk II Biomaker Kit

The (2019/2020) Biomaker kit was upgraded to contain a multi-purpose Arduino-compatible Rich UNO board from Open Smart and several sets of parts and breakout boards for expansion including a programmable touchscreen from 4D Systems.

Mk III Biomaker Kit

The Biomaker kit was updated to an Arduino UNO compatible multifunction board - the Seeedstudio Grove Beginner board. A multi-stage training scheme was devised, starting with a Beginner's kit, adding an expansion kit and then Seeedstudio Wio Terminal with integrated screen and wireless communications.

Mk IV Biomaker Kit

This kit included the Seeedstudio Wio Terminal (ATSAMD51 microcontroller-based device with Realtek RTL8720DN BLE 5.0 & Wi-Fi 2.4G/5G Dev Board with a 2.4” LCD Screen and onboard sensors with Grove connectors for expansion