An Introduction to Club Biomek User Forum on the Web

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Q: Who can join Club Biomek Forum? Is membership restricted to Biomek users? Is there a fee?

A: Membership is free and anyone can join. Registration requests may be submitted through the site and are processed every few days. Due to continual, sophisticated hacker attempts, instant automatic registration has been disabled in favor of a manual review process. This became necessary to prevent the accumulation of spam threads.

Q: Do the web forums serve a role as a part of, or in place of, traditional Customer Technical Support (CTS)? Are questions posted to the forum guaranteed to receive an answer?

A: The web forum is simply a place where users of Biomek automation can share ideas and tips, and help each other. It is, therefore, independent of our Customer Technical Support group and not regularly monitored, so we cannot guarantee support on it.  To contact our Technical Support staff, please call us on your regional technical support hotline, or through email at: robotics@beckman.com. Support issues received through these venues are automatically tracked and handled until resolution.

Q: Does this mean that Beckman Coulter individuals are not present on the forum?

A: Actually, Beckman Coulter employees are quite active on the forum, and several of us are moderators, meaning that we approve new topics as they are entered. We often provide an answer to questions posted there, but just as often, the most valuable answers come from other forum members in the automation community.  We also take what we learn from forum topics seriously, and may use what we learn there to direct product enhancements.

Q: If I learn something on the Web Forum and have trouble implementing it myself, can I get help from Customer Technical Support (CTS)?

A: It depends on what you learned. The CTS group is trained to troubleshoot to the level of detail found in the product manuals. More advanced topics, such as Visual Basic scripting, are beyond the scope and training of our CTS personnel. This is one of the main reasons for the creation of the forum, as it provides a fertile place for the exchange of sample code. Within the forum, our developers often share "under the hood" details that are far beyond what we publish in our manuals or which we provide support. It is also well beyond what the vast majority of our customers need. For these reasons, anyone interested in advanced Biomek lore should definitely become a member of the forum!

Tips from Club Biomek User Forum

Within each issue of T3, we will highlight a few topics of interest from the web forum. This month, we focus on two threads of interest, both from the "scripting" genre.

Adding labware to the deck via visual basic script

One of the most common questions to come up when advanced users wish to write methods involves changing the labware contents on the deck. One of the earliest posts on the forum contains an example and may be found at: http://forums.beckmancoulter.com/ index.php?showtopic=91 ... or just log on to the forum, Posting/Downloads section, Scripting Specific Postings subforum, and go to the earliest page.

Click here for the tip

Downloaded nearly 200 times as of this writing, this post has been very popular, and provides a well-documented description of the steps necessary to add labware to the deck and configure it for use within a method. By following the simple steps found at the above link, anyone can learn how to create just the right labware at any place on the deck, which is great for dynamic methods that rely on runtime input to direct the liquid handler functions.

Creating text file entries during runtime

Another common need is the ability to write some sort of entries to a text file during the run, to record barcodes, plate contents or other useful information for later analysis.  At the following address one can find the "File Entry Writer" example, which demonstrates some very advanced Biomek functionality. Not only does the script write values of the user's choice to the file at runtime, but it has a graphical front end--or User Interface (UI)--based on HTML. This makes it very easy for a typical user to work with. See the following link for all the details: http://forums.beckmancoulter.com/ index.php?showtopic=99

Click here for the tip

In our next issue, we will review more from the hundreds of informative threads that have accumulated over the last two and a half years on Club Biomek Web Forum.

* All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Where applicable, the PCR process is covered by patents owned by Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., and F. Hoffmann-LaRoche, Ltd.

For Research Use Only; not for use in diagnostic procedures.

For comments or questions about T³ Update, please contact the T³ Editor.

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