EK210 Project: Cell Tissue Chamber for Microscopy

This project spanned from October 2021-December 2021. It in, my group and I followed the engineering design process as taught to us in EK210 lectures, and designed a portable cell incubator that maintains proper temperature and humidity while allowing for easy transfer to a Zeiss S-25 microscope for analysis.

Figure 1:Electrical Arduino Riser Diagram of our project. It can sense and detect temperatures using the digital temperature and humidity sensors, contain heat using the positive temperature coefficient (PTC) heater, and trigger temperature control by alarming the user when the temperature is out of proper range.

Throughout the testing of our prototype, we found that it works as intended in most cases. The preheat time was 9-27 minutes, a great improvement from our initial target time length of 15-90 minutes, thus resulting the box to reach our desired temperatures in a short enough period of time and low voltage. With the power unplugged, the temperature drop rate was about -0.2°C/min, and nearly no humidity drop occurred within the first 5 minutes. Overall, our main objectives were met, and despite having various power supply sources providing power for individual components, we managed to greatly reduce plenty of unnecessary cost and weight

Figure 2: Physical Build of our project. We installed all of the necessary components inside a styrofoam box because it is lightweight and cheap, while simultaneously large in size and capable of maintaining the optimal environment for cells.

Video 1: Sped up Process of our Cell Tissue Chamber reaching optimal conditions. As shown, our temperature gradually increases to the 36°-37° range while also maintaining a humidity of about 99%. This is not exactly 95% and this margin of error can be explained by extra condensation occurring on the humidity sensor. Besides this, our sensor still maintains a proper humidity.