In November and December I have been running a quite slow 700 mile sneaker net
between Illinois and Virginia. The project involves automating a lab. The
process begins with benchtop lab instruments and ends with the records stored
in a database. In order to make that happen we had to build the network.
We pulled ethernet cable to network lab instruments. We setup an ETL data
workflow for each instrument. In most instances we were able to customize an
instrument's process report to manage the data extraction and transformation.
Data was loaded into LIMS via a REST API accessed via powershell. One of the
lab instruments had a less flexible software interface so we had to write our
own data transformation routine. In addition to data transformation we also had
a great opportunity to complete business calculations to automate a manual
calculation.
It was fun completing the 1,500 mile sneaker net. It also felt oddly powerful
to build an automated laboratory from the copper to the UI and everything in
the middle. Of course this isn't a sneaker net. That's the point of the
automation. The sneaker net was when I drove a PC from Il to Va; programmed the
application; drove the PC from Va to Il and installed it. It is actually a
decent drive for 750 miles. And while I was in Champaign-Urbana, Il I got to
have a nice dinner with JWH. :)
