An AI-directed plant tissue culture research platform. Claude — Anthropic's AI — autonomously monitors and controls the lab environment on a Raspberry Pi, making decisions every 15 minutes. A human operator handles the physical work; Claude designs the protocols, analyses the data, and adjusts procedures.
The goal: grow plants from single cells using sterile tissue culture techniques, with AI directing the entire research process. Three species — mint (easy), Syngonium (medium), lavender (hard).
This blog documents the build from first sensor reading to autonomous operation.
Posts
—
Logistics Day — DNS, Deliveries, and Documentation The unsexy work that makes everything else possible. Blog launched, DNS records fixed, deliveries chased, fridge calibrated. The agent keeps running while the human deals with Royal Mail.
—
The Agent Goes Autonomous Claude Code running 24/7 on the Pi — monitoring every 15 minutes, surviving reboots, producing verbose traces. A silent SQLite bug. The first director's review. And a blog.
—
Biology Decisions — Species, Protocol, and a Storage Incident Identified our mint as a sterile hybrid perfect for TC. Chose organogenesis over somatic embryogenesis as the first protocol. A Syngonium Albo arrived. And the plant growth regulators may have been cooked.
—
Remote Access and First Data Analysis SSH tunnelling through Cloudflare for access from any network. First statistical analysis of 3,936 sensor readings. Automated backups to protect against SD card failure.
—
The Research Pivot — Temperature Optimisation An AI-assisted literature review surfaces a genuine research gap. A citrus irradiation paper triggers a platform reframe. Claude pushes back hard on what we can't do yet. The Shelly Plug S enters the picture.
—
Going Online — From Serial Port to Cloud API WiFi, HTTP POST, a Flask server on a Raspberry Pi, Cloudflare tunnels, systemd services. The sensor data pipeline from hardware to cloud in one day.
—
First Light — An ESP32 Reads a Sensor Got an ESP32 reading temperature and humidity from a DHT22 sensor. The first data point in what will become an AI-directed tissue culture lab.
—
The Plan — An AI-Directed Tissue Culture Lab The manifesto: Claude directs the research, a human operates the lab, and an AI feedback loop replaces months of trial-and-error protocol development. Total cost: £434.