Full instrument and analysis software for a label-free biomolecular-binding platform
Building every layer of software for a new label-free binding instrument — from embedded C firmware and a Linux capture driver to .NET instrument control and native global non-linear least-squares fitting of thousands of points in milliseconds.
Customer
A venture-backed startup commercializing a label-free, nanostructured-silicon platform for measuring the kinetics of protein–protein, protein–antibody, and protein–small-molecule interactions — an alternative to the commercially dominant surface plasmon resonance (SPR) approach.
Challenge
A brand-new instrument product line needed all of its software written from scratch, on both the instrument and the computer side, and the analysis had to fit thousands of data points fast enough to be interactive.
Solution
We wrote the full software stack from the ground up.
- Embedded C driving Microchip control boards for H-bridge temperature control and custom motion.
- A Linux block driver to collect CCD data from an image-capture card in firmware.
- An XML control language, schema, and test scheme for scriptable instrument control, letting users program their own methods.
- A C server running on a single-board computer in the toolset to accept commands from the control software.
- .NET control software — custom controls, method programming, a diagnostic mode, and a standalone analysis mode.
- Global, non-linear least-squares fitting of thousands of points in roughly 50 ms in native C#.
- Continuous iteration across the toolset's lifespan, driven by feedback from customer engagements.
The platform shipped commercially to both academic and industrial customers. The analysis software was strong enough that it was licensed to other vendors of label-free binding instrumentation, where it was used to fit thousands of traces with a global-fit approach.