The document discusses making pharmaceutical laboratory instrumentation more accessible to chemists through open-access laboratories. It describes how a touchscreen interface was added to an HPLC system to allow chemists to easily select solvents for assays. The interface was designed using a programmable touchscreen and custom circuit boards. This allows chemists to independently run experiments without specialized training on the HPLC software.

1. Bridging Pharma and IT Making Open Access Instrumentation Open to All Brian Bissett Pfizer Inc. Groton CT Molecular Properties Group

3. Consequences

4. Common Situation Instrument A Site G Corporation Instrument B Instrument C Instrument D Screen Instrument E Site A Instrument F Instrument G Instrument H Screen

5. New Paradigm – Sharing Instrumentation Instrument A Corporation Instrument B Instrument C Instrument D Screen Instrument E Site G Instrument F Instrument G Instrument H

10. The Solution: A User Friendly Touchscreen Interface

11. Touch Screen Interface Connectors (Back of Unit) RS-232 RS-485 DIGITAL I/O

13. Using the Digital Outputs to Drive Pump Control Relays

14. Custom Relay Driver Circuit For OP7100 Touch Screen

15. Testing – Breadboards Don’t Lie.

22. Board Layout – Post Ripup

23. Board Layout – Step 5 – Adding a Ground Plane

24. Board Layout – Ground Plane - Close up

26. Gerber File – Top Silk Screen

27. Gerber File – Top Layer

28. Gerber File – Bottom Layer with Ground Plane

32. The Interface Card (Final Product)

33. Interface Card with Active Channels

34. Software Flowchart – Dynamic C Is Method Running? Scan for Solvent Selection Read Input 0 Button Pressed? Change Solvent To Selection Selection is Disabled Start Method LOW YES YES HIGH NO NO