Safety Concerns: Granting Access to PioReactor Feature on Hugging Face Space

[linx5o]

In particular, having access to the dosing feature could result in the vial being over filled and spilling liquids onto the electronics below. This is as there are no sensors to detect the amount of liquid in the vials.

Ideas for how this should be handled as the Hugging Face Space is supposed to be open and accessible.

[sgbaird]

Great point, and definitely worth thinking carefully about. I think that in terms of safeguards for a demo, one of the safer options is to not allow more than the amount of liquid that gets to say, 90% full across the whole system (i.e., not very much liquid at all), and to only use water. This would amount to filling a separate vial 90% full, and transferring that water back and forth between the primary vial and an additional "waste" vial (which also has a peristaltic pump). NOTE: maybe this is the best to start with.

This would affect what we want to show from a demo perspective. For example, yeast growth or making Jello becomes unfeasible for a number of reasons - not purely water, and to run multiple iterations would require a larger stock of material.

Another safeguard would be to make sure that the system is tightly sealed, and to make sure from a pressure standpoint, if the vial starts to get overfilled the path of least resistance is into a waste container.

From a software perspective, we could implement logic that controls the integrated dosing time, with a generous safety threshold away from the inferred "full".

From a hardware perspective, we could add some kind of liquid detection sensor to the vial through the cap.

[linx5o]

From a software standpoint, we could have a file on the PioReactor which stores the current amount of liquid in the reactor. Then using this file we could enforce a limit through software.

Potential issue of how to reset the file - run a large number on the exit pump, could be a bit tedious.