| A multi-wavelength detection instrument has been developed for the detection of live microbial cells, dead cells, and spores. This instrument operates on the principle of intrinsic fluorescence of microbes and is thus real-time. This approach is faster, cheaper, and yields more information than many current approaches. It also requires no sample contact.; This multi-wavelength detection instrument has been designed by a team of engineers at the National Center for the Design of Molecular Function. My contribution is the embedded software that controls the instrument and communicates with a PC. I also wrote the software that runs on a PC that sends commands to the instrument. The graphical user interface (GUI) provides the user with a way to set sampling parameters, select sampling options, to collect data, and to save it. The embedded code responds to the requests sent by the PC. It orchestrates all of the individual components in a way that provides smooth, seamless, data collection. In the future, detection algorithms will be added to the system.; After discussing the individual parts of the embedded and GUI software, results are presented. This section presents a dose response test that shows the ability of the instrument to detect different concentrations of microbes. |
