The Lego MindStorms Kit

I received this as Christmas gift. It was greatly reduced. It is an older kit and was found at a clearance store. I have been visiting a few sites that talk about using this kit for building laboratory equipment.

Here is one site:

http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_thread/thread/3c31273ee058364b#

Here is another:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pbAH9TiGqs

And another(this is just using Lego):

http://www.instructables.com/id/Lego-Microtome/

I like DNA science (DNA extraction, there is many sites and recipes for this) and DIYBIO (do it yourself biology) and I have looked into PCR (polymerase chain reaction) which is the copying of DNA. Basically with the right chemicals and the heating and cooling of the DNA you can take a small amount of DNA and make more for testing. So to do this manually you would take your sample and transfer it from a hot water bath to a cold water bath many times or you could buy a thermocycler (which usually is expensive).

So what I am looking into doing is building an arm from the Lego Mindstorm kit to take my sample from one bath to the other at the right timing sequence.

I will be doing more searches on uses for this kit and posting my progress on the development of this project.