Manual time-lapse scanning of Petri plates to phenotype plant seedlings is a tedious task. We developed  SPIRO, a smart plate imaging robot, that does the boring work for us and does it much better.

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SPIRO is a very simple raspberry pi-driven robot. It comprises a camera, a green light source for imaging in the dark and a rotating plate holder that can accommodate up to four plates (12cm square plates or 9 cm round plates).

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SPIRO is small and fits into plant growth cabinets. It is also cheap, easy to assemble and operate. Furthermore, we made its blueprints and code open source with the hope that community will develop them further.

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Although SPIRO was originally designed for plant research, it is actually suitable for imaging fungi, bacteria, moss or anything else that can grow on vertical Petri dishes. The structural parts of SPIRO are 3D printable and can be easily adjusted for a specific use.