A significant focus of our project was on automating stable co-cultures (see automation). We aim to make co-cultures so simple that a computer can control them and so that they can be monitored and controlled from anywhere. To that end, we designed a web interface for controlling and monitoring a co-culture. It communicates with the raspberry pi, the computer which controls the co-culture to graph recorded data points and adjust the target ratio on the fly.

The web app is built with React and makes calls to a python backend which is built into the control algorithm (see model). Since everything is run on the same device, there is no need for any additional hardware. Also, since all the controls are made through web calls, this could be extended to a web app so that a co-culture could be monitored from a lab computer, an office laptop, or even a cellphone at home.

For more information, see our GitHub repository at https://github.com/igem-waterloo/uwaterloo-igem-2018, specifically the turbocat and turbocat-client directories.