KBioscience KUBE

The KUBE is a thermal plate sealer for microplates from KBioscience, controlled over an RS-232 serial interface.

Property	Value
Communication	Serial / RS-232, ASCII command protocol
Serial settings	9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, no handshake
Terminator	CR (\r)

Warning

This driver has NOT been tested against hardware in PyLabRobot. If you verify it on a sealer, please open a PR to remove the not-tested warning.

Physical setup

Connect the sealer’s RS-232 port to your computer, typically through a USB-to-serial adapter. Make sure the sealer’s serial parameters match the driver defaults (9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, no handshake). A unit running the older ALPS300 protocol is not supported and is rejected at setup.

Connect

setup() opens the serial port, waits for the device to be ready, reads the firmware version and product name, sets the plate orientation, and pre-heats to the preheating temperature. It also logs the not-tested warning.

from pylabrobot.kbioscience import KBioscienceKUBE

sealer = KBioscienceKUBE(port="/dev/ttyUSB0")  # replace with your port
await sealer.setup()

Seal a plate

seal() applies the time and temperature, waits for the heater to reach the setpoint, seals the plate, then returns to the idle temperature. Sealing time is 0.5–9.9 s; temperature is 5–199 °C.

await sealer.seal(temperature=170, duration=2.5)

Seal with a stored preset

Instead of a user-defined time and temperature, seal with one of the six presets stored on the instrument.

from pylabrobot.kbioscience import SealPreset

await sealer.seal(preset=SealPreset.ONE)

Temperature

Set the sealing temperature setpoint and read the current heater temperature.

await sealer.set_temperature(160)
print("Current temperature:", await sealer.request_temperature(), "C")

Status

Read the status byte as a set of flags.

print("Status:", await sealer.request_status())

Teardown

await sealer.stop()