- A working PUMA 500/560 six-axis robot arm was acquired in Austin for a few hundred dollars; the group is reverse-engineering its 1980s hardware (servos, potentiometers, electric brakes) and planning an open-source retrofit using Mesa 5i20/5i22 FPGA cards, EMC2/LinuxCNC, and 7i30/7i40 servo amplifiers for an estimated control-electronics budget of ~$500–$1 k.

- Retrofit design debates include replacing long encoder cables with EtherCAT-based distributed control to reduce EMI, powering the system with either 78 V/600 W switch-mode or 600 VA toroidal transformers, and adding safety perimeters plus a full robot cage for operator protection.

- Proposed end-effectors range from a ceiling-mounted “waldo” controlled by a wearable exoskeleton to a 4-axis CNC spindle and a humorous “Mr. Stabby” demo, illustrating the arm’s potential as a general-purpose open-source automation platform.

- Eric Michaud floated a $100 k open-source prize for achieving sub-micron double-sided PCB automation, while the “Lab Rat Adoption Taskforce (LRAT)” was conceived to re-home retired lab animals and design outreach branding.

- Shared resources include scanned PUMA manuals from juve.ro and CMU archives, a Chinese retrofit paper claiming a $4 k total rebuild, Mesa product pages, and personal photo logs; Austin-area liquidators were identified as sources for surplus thermocyclers and other biotech gear.

- Side projects discussed: “quantified kitty” DIY animal-tracking cameras inspired by German cat-cam hardware, an AVR+HTTP-server kit to network common thermocycler models, and participation in the IGVC autonomous-ground-vehicle competition.

- Links and media circulated: New Scientist article on probiotic bacteria for cognitive enhancement, NPR coverage of RNAi-based Ebola protection in primates, BioCurious Bay Area biology lab space talk, and practical automation tips using wget + cron and rss2email for feed management.