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Comment by jamessb | Hacker News Reader

The integrating separate pieces of lab equipment into one unit is reminiscent of the Bento Bio 'all in one' lab: http://www.bento.bio/bento-lab/

The bento lab looks more useful for teaching molecular biology: it has a mini-centrifuge, thermocycler for PCR, and apparatus for gel electrophoresis. The amino one looks like it only lets you culture bacteria, and track the pH/temperature/OD as you do so.

I don't really see why anyone would buy this. The sales pitches are unconvincing, and sound close to mis-selling: this is really not something I would choose to use in "domestic life" to make "bread, beer, cider or wine", and I'm skeptical the 'nightlight' makes enough light to actually function as a nightlight.

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Bento Bio looks pretty cool. But it also produces nothing tangible or fun. Much of molecular biology is so abstract - the mixing of particular amounts of clear liquids to get a band to show up on a gel. It's difficult to ground those abstractions into every-day tangible lessons. Making a blue paint from some sugar, water and cells is, on the other hand, a supremely tangible product. Whether it works and is actually fun and productive is another question. But it seems to be targeting a different kind of audience.

It's seems confused about who it is pitched at: the founder's personal site refers to it as "the tamagotchi for synthetic biology" [0]; but the main landing page [1] says that it enables "anyone to create and grow living cells for research, education or domestic life", and the about page [2] refers to use "at home, in labs or in schools" and says it "can be used in pro labs too".

I think it would be better to market this as a purely fun thing, rather than as a serious, useful tool. I doubt many will sell: this may have been better left as an art/design project, without an associated company.

[0]: http://julielegault.com/amino [1]: http://www.amino.bio/intro/ [2]: http://www.amino.bio/what/

As a molecular biologist, I think Bento aren't doing enough to pitch the possibilities of molecular biology. Amino has stuff that glows. With the equipment, Bento can pretty much make that stuff too, but they're not making that clear.

Also, you're right - different audiences. I think Bento is more about DNA barcoding.

Yes, I saw a presentation from the Bento Box people at a conference a couple of weeks ago. It seemed to be a much more polished product than Amino, and they were clear about the use cases and limitations while Amino seems to be a lot more hand-wavy.

It's still nice to see more competition in this space, though.

Ouh, interesting. I saw their article in Wired the other day and I was considering getting one of those. What were the use cases and limitations they talked about?

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