This product listing is for a standalone 96-well or 384-well RGB LED light panel only. Front and back photos of the light panel are pictured above, along with an example use case where a 96-well microplate (not included) is illuminated via a 5V microcontroller (not included).

The microplate LED light panel is core component of the Microplate Assistive Pipetting Light Guide (M.A.P.L.E.). This panel is a custom red, green, blue (RGB) LED matrix comprised of 96 or 384 LEDs which are located such that each LED of the circuit board corresponds to one well of a 96- or 384-well microplate as defined by the ANSI/SBS/SLAS specification for microplate footprint dimensions. This design allows each well of a 96- or 384-well microplate to be illuminated independently. This is accomplished by spacing the LEDs 9mm apart on a circuitboard that has a footprint of 122mm x 83mm for 96-well microplates and spacing the LEDs 4.5mm apart for 384-well microplates. Both the 96- and 384-well light panel can be used with the published Python GUI application to facilitate benchtop sample transfer between microplates or incorporated into custom projects to facilitate any desired microplate illumination schemes. A full description of the M.A.P.L.E. project can be found in the 2019 SLAS Technology manuscript titled Design of Microplate-Compatible Illumination Panels for a Semiautomated Benchtop Pipetting System. These panels were assembled using automated methods via Small Batch Assembly.

This light panel can be controlled with any +5V compatible microcontroller via a 3 wire connection for +5V, GND and data. The connector pins are 2.54mm apart and can be used with 2.54mm headers or other similar connectors. For a typical Arduino application, the light panel can be controlled by including the Adafruit Neopixel library or the FastLED Arduino library. Sample Arduino firmware can be found at the MAPLE project's GitHub repository. This light panel can also be easily connected to WiFi LED controllers such as the ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2.

Applications for this light panel include:

• manual benchtop microplate cherrypicking guidance for laboratory users (M.A.P.L.E. open source project described above - example video with 384 well variant of this product)
• portable microplate illumination for laboratory tours & demonstrations (example video)
• teaching tool for laboratories (illuminate quadrants of microplates, patterns related to assay or compound layouts, etc.)
• unique illumination of microplates for vendor booths at trade shows (easily accomplished when combined with a WiFi controller such as the Pixelblaze v2 example video of 384 well variant of light panel connected to Pixelblaze v2)
• Microplate based photochemistry
• Displaying pixel-based animations in microplates (marketing applications)

A small light panel power board is available for purchase separately. The power board allows the 96- or 384-well RGB light panels to be easily connected to 5V power source and 5V microcontroller for rapid development. The power board consists of a barrel jack connector for 5V power supply, a 1000uF capacitor and 300 Ohm resistor between the data connection pins as recommended in the Adafruit Neopixel best practices guide.

NOTE: Please be aware that at full intensity with all LEDs turned fully on for white light the 96-well light panel will draw approximately 3 amps of current. In the same scenario the 384-well light panel will draw 6.24 amps of current. It is not recommended to run the light panels at full white light intensity for extended periods of time without an appropriately sized power supply and sufficient cooling. Most bench-top lab applications will have sufficient LED brightness at 50% intensity or less.