[sudo-discuss] sudo make me a circuit

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

I have a potentially prize winning idea, but I need your help...

As you might know, I've been teaching Agar Art workshops at CCL - painting
with colored bacteria! Next session is this coming Monday
<https://www.meetup.com/Counter-Culture-Labs/events/264878488/>. The
American Society for Microbiology is holding a yearly Agar Art Contest
<https://www.asm.org/Events/2019-ASM-Agar-Art-Contest/Home> that we can
submit some of our best work to.

My idea is to embed a little LED circuit *in the agar* in a Petri plate,
light up a UV LED, and then trace the circuit on top of the agar in
fluorescent E. coli!

Here's the part I need your help with... we'll need to experiment a bit
with different circuit implementations to figure out what works best. I can
easily solder a little "throwie" circuit myself, but I don't think I'll
have time to go through half a dozen designs to see what works best (or at
all). So ideally I'd love to partner up with somebody why can crank out a
couple circuit versions while I focus on the wetlab side. You'll get full
share of the credit and any prize money of course.

A couple complications:

   - I would love to be able to autoclave the circuit before embedding it
   in agar, to eliminate any possible contamination. This involves heating to
   121C/250F for 20 minutes under steam. Not sure which materials will stand
   up to that (batteries? plastic LED?)
   - The normal E. coli growth medium is quite conductive. We should be
   able to use a medium without salt, but it will likely still have some
   conductivity. We could try coat the entire circuit in clear epoxy to
   insulate it though.
   - The circuit will still need to give off enough light after been
   embedded in agar for several days. Coin cell throwies do last a couple
   days, but UV LEDs are a bit more power hungry, so perhaps we could try a
   AAA?
   - Having the UV LED on continuously may not be healthy for the bacteria
   growing on top, so we may need to include a Reed switch or some other
   mechanism to turn the LED on remotely.
   - More complicated circuits = extra awesomesauce! Can we build a circuit
   that measures the pH in the agar under an acid producing bacteria? Create a
   grid of electrodes that affects the growth of bacteria growing on top of it?
   - Ideally, the whole circuit would fit inside a 10cm Petri dish - let's
   call it 9.5cm diameter, and no more than about 1cm in height. If necessary,
   we do have access to larger and deeper Petri dishes though.

Patrik
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