I’m likely one of the only people on the planet who would be interested in this but…
Does PyLabRobot have an OEM mode like PyHamilton does? Where I can send firmware commands directly to the system?
I am developing a new product which will start out on the Hamilton Star and I am currently using their Macro Programming language as the basis for it. I expect to make it available across more liquid handlers as time goes on and would prefer not to have to rewrite all of my code in another control/macro language every time I port to a new system.
Yes, with PLR you can easily send your own firmware commands. In fact, PLR is entirely based on sending firmware commands for everything, tip pickups, aspirations, movements, etc. (this is how we avoid VENUS).
Just as a word of caution, as you know, firmware commands are specific to a machine (STAR and STARLet are the same). PLR is only hardware agnostic on a layer above that (LiquidHandler and other front end interfaces). You get hardware agnosticity automatically if you use the front end APIs, we guarantee this, but when sending direct firmware commands you still have to design your program in a way that it can be easy to use with different liquid handling robots in the future. That said, it would probably still be easier to move your program to different machines if it is written in Python. And it will automatically work on every operating systems, not just Windows.