Conspecta at the Bench
Conspecta runs on whatever screen you have with you: a desktop in the office, an iPad or an Android tablet on a cart, a phone in your pocket. In a browser there is nothing to install, and there is an app for iPhone and one for Android. Same projects, same data, whichever you open. What changes is the layout. On a narrow screen it rearranges into something you can use with one hand free, for the times you're scanning a tube, checking what's in a box, starting a timer, or working out a dilution.
Get the App
The Conspecta app is on the App Store for iPhone, and on Google Play for Android phones and Android tablets. It signs in with the same account and opens the same projects as the browser, so a sample you register standing at the freezer is on your laptop before you are back at your desk.
Conspecta offers it to you as well, so you don't have to come back here for the link. Get the mobile app sits in the account menu at the bottom of the sidebar, and there's a Mobile App card in Settings → About. On a computer both show a QR code per store to point your phone's camera at, which is the quickest way to get the app onto the device that wants it. On a phone the codes are gone, since you can't scan the screen you're holding, and the store link stands on its own.
An iPad opens conspecta.bio in Safari, and everything on this page works there.
From the iPhone Home Screen
Press and hold the Conspecta icon and three things are one tap away.
| Action | Where it lands |
|---|---|
| Scan a label | The camera, ready for a QR code |
| Timers | The countdown tab, with your presets under it |
| New note | The notebook in the project you were last in, with the template picker already open |
A Conspecta link opens the app as well. Tap a link to a sample in an email or a message and you land on that sample. Sign-in and invitation links open in a browser, which is where those finish.
The icon carries the same number the Inbox does, so the Home Screen tells you what is waiting before you open anything. It follows the notification settings you gave Conspecta, so switching badges off in iOS Settings switches this off too.
Which Layout You Get
Conspecta reshapes itself for the screen it is on, and there is nothing to set.
| Where you're working | What you get |
|---|---|
| A phone | The compact layout: a workspace grid, four tabs along the bottom, Scan, and Bench Tools, all in reach of a thumb. |
| A tablet, a laptop, or a desktop | The full layout, with the sidebar down the left. A tablet gets the same Conspecta a laptop does. |
What decides it is the width of the window rather than the device that window is on, which shows up in two places. A tablet sharing its screen with another app is narrow enough to get the compact layout. And dragging a window narrow on a laptop switches layouts too, which is the quickest way to see the other one.
The one thing that gives way on a smaller screen is the sidebar. On a tablet, or in a laptop window that isn't close to full width, it shows its icons without their labels so the content keeps the room. Set Settings → Navigation → Sidebar Mode to Expanded to keep the labels at any width.
Getting Around
The compact home screen shows the project you're in and a grid of its workspaces, with Bench Tools below them. Four tabs sit along the bottom:
- Home for the workspace grid
- Search for the same search as the full layout, across every project you can reach
- Inbox for invitations, mentions, task reminders, and alerts
- You for your profile, settings, and sign out
Tap the project name at the top to open its project page; tap the chevron beside it to switch projects. The same workspaces are here as in the full layout, minus any you've hidden in Settings → General.
Holding a finger on a card or a row selects it, which is how you reach the bulk actions a mouse gets by hovering: the checkbox fills in and the action bar slides up. Keep holding and move, and the selection follows your finger, so you can drop it into a folder.
A few views change shape as the window narrows rather than disappearing. The Planner calendar drops its Week view and opens on Day. In Cytometry the tool menus move into a bottom sheet you can reach with a thumb, and the gating trail and the plot map give up their space to the plot itself. A figure stacks its panels into a single column once the window is too narrow to keep them all readable, so a figure three panels across stacks on a tablet as well as on a phone. A data table's chart stops sharing the screen with the grid and takes all of it.
Scanning
Tap Scan on the compact home screen to open the camera. Point it at a Conspecta label and you land on that sample, item, or location.
Labels carry a QR code, which the app's scanner reads without any setup. What the code holds is the sample's own id rather than a web address, so scan from Conspecta: the phone's built-in camera app will show you the code itself and nothing more. If a code isn't linked to anything yet, you're offered Link to a sample or Link to an item on the spot, which is the fast way to label a box of pre-barcoded tubes: scan, pick, scan the next.
Camera scanning comes with the narrow layout, and Scan items in on a location's header opens the same camera to fill a box or a freezer, which Organize Lab Spaces covers. With a handheld barcode scanner plugged in, scanning works from anywhere in the app without opening anything first, and a Scan ready chip in the toolbar tells you it's listening.
Older 1D laser scanners can't read Conspecta labels. The labels use QR codes, which need a phone camera or a 2D imager. If your lab has a laser wand that only reads barcodes, it won't see them.
Bench Tools
Bench Tools are four utilities under the workspace grid. They don't belong to a project and never call the server, so they open instantly and keep working if the lab's Wi-Fi drops. They sit on the compact home screen, which is where you want them, so you'll find them on a phone rather than on a full-screen laptop. Hide any of them from Settings → General.
Timers
Three tabs, all of which keep running when you switch between them or leave the app.
Timer sets a countdown with an hours-minutes-seconds wheel, and takes an optional name so three at once stay straight. Swipe a running timer to delete it. A finished timer always chimes, deliberately: a bench timer you can silence is no use.
Under Presets sit your named durations, each a name and a time you set once, like "Trypsin" at 5 minutes. Tapping one starts a running timer that already carries the name and the icon, so a row of countdowns stays readable at a glance. A new account arrives with eight covering the everyday ones: warm, trypsin, spin, wash, PFA fix, perm, block and incubate, plus one worked sequence, IF stain, in a row of its own beneath them. Edit beside the heading lets you rename them, re-time them, drag them into the order you want, add your own, and put the shipped set back. Tapping a preset's icon there opens a picker holding the lab icons and a searchable library to choose from. Presets belong to your account rather than to one device, so signing in on the tablet at the bench brings them with you, and they keep working with the Wi-Fi down.
A counting timer rides along at the bottom of whatever screen you move to, showing the one finishing soonest and a count of the rest. Tap it to go to the timer, and a step timer takes you to that step inside its run, which Run a Protocol shows. A timer that runs out while you're writing up a notebook page chimes there and then, and in a browser, one that ran out with the tab closed chimes when you next open it.
A timer that finishes while you're in another browser tab shows a desktop notification with its name. In the iPhone and Android apps, a finished timer rings from the lock screen the moment it ends, even when the app is closed. Either way, tapping it lands where that timer lives: a step timer opens that step inside its run, and one you dialled yourself opens your timers. The first timer you start or alarm you set asks permission to send notifications.
While a timer counts, the iPhone and Android apps keep it on the lock screen as well, so a phone lying on the bench tells you how long is left without being unlocked. It shows the one finishing soonest with a count of the others, matching the strip inside the app, and on an iPhone it rides in the Dynamic Island too. A multi-step timer names the step it is on, counts down that step rather than the whole run, fills a bar as the step runs, and says which step comes next. Beneath the countdown is the time that step ends, and alongside it the time the whole run finishes, so a readout your phone drew a while ago can still be checked against the clock. It moves to the next step on its own as each one ends. A step timer in a protocol shows its place in the run, like 3 of 12. A running stopwatch appears the same way, counting up. It clears when the last one stops. On iPhone this needs iOS 16.2 or later; on Android it sits in the notification shade.
A preset can hold more than one step, which turns it into a sequence: a stain is a block, a primary, three washes, a secondary and a DAPI, and starting it runs all eight back to back. Sequences sit in full-width rows under the grid of chips, each spelling out its chain, its step count and how long the whole run takes, since tapping one commits you to all of it. A long chain names the steps it has room for and counts the rest. While it counts, the card leads with the run's own name, puts the step you're on under it, like "Wash · step 3 of 8", and shows what the whole run has left below that. Tap that last line to open the whole run: every step in order, the ones behind you ticked off, the one counting showing its time, and the rest showing the durations they're set to. Tap it again to close. Each step ends by itself, chimes, and rolls straight into the next. Skip ends the step you're on early, +1m gives it another minute, Pause holds the run where it is until you start it again, and Stop ends it. A skip leaves a message with Undo in it, which stands for a few seconds and puts that step back with the time it had left.
In Edit, a preset with one step shows Add a step beneath it. Add one and the row opens into a numbered list you can rename, re-time, reorder, and delete a step from, up to twelve. A preset back down to a single step goes back to being an ordinary timer.
Active timers lists every countdown you have going, wherever you started it. A timer on a protocol run step and a Timer block in a note run on the same clock as the ones you dial here, so they appear in this list too, under the step and the protocol they belong to, with a link back to that exact step.
Stopwatch counts up rather than down, for timing something whose length you don't know in advance.
Alarm rings at a clock time rather than after a duration, which suits the step you have to be back for at 4:15. It rings at that time every day until you switch it off. In the iPhone and Android apps the ring comes from the lock screen, so it reaches you with Conspecta closed, and tapping it opens your alarms. In a browser it rings while the Timers screen is open, within five minutes of the time, and one you were away for waits quietly for the next day.
Everything is stored against the wall clock, so timers survive a reload, a navigation, and a locked screen.
Calculators
Fifteen calculators, with a search box at the top so you can type "dilution" or "Tm" instead of scanning the list.
| Calculator | What it works out |
|---|---|
| Scientific calculator | A full keypad, for the arithmetic that isn't one of the others |
| Dilution (C1V1 = C2V2) | How much stock and how much diluent to reach a target concentration |
| Serial dilution | A whole fold-dilution series, ready to pipette into a row of tubes |
| Molarity → mass | How much to weigh out for a given molarity, volume, and molecular weight |
| Molarity ↔ mg/mL | Converting between molar and mass concentration, both ways |
| Percent (w/v) → mass | Grams needed for a percent solution |
| Master mix | Per-reaction volumes scaled to your reaction count, with overage |
| A₂₆₀ → concentration | Nucleic acid concentration from a spectrophotometer reading |
| ng ↔ pmol | Mass to moles for DNA, RNA, oligos, and protein |
| OD₆₀₀ → cells/mL | Cell density from a culture's optical density |
| Centrifuge: RCF ↔ RPM | Converting g-force to rotor speed, using your rotor radius |
| pH ↔ [H⁺] | Proton concentration from pH, and back |
| Absorbance ↔ %T | Absorbance to percent transmittance, and back |
| Primer Tm | Melting temperature for a primer sequence |
| Protein parameters | pI, extinction coefficient, molecular weight, and hydropathy from a sequence |
Converter
A unit converter covering 31 categories, from volume and mass through molar concentration, enzyme activity, osmolarity, UV dose, and radioactivity. Search matches a category name, a unit symbol, or a unit's full name, so typing rpm finds Rotational speed without you having to guess what the category is called.
Conversions that need a second piece of information live in Calculators instead, because they aren't really unit conversions: RCF to RPM needs the rotor radius, mass to moles needs a molecular weight, ng to pmol needs a sequence length.
Counter
A full-screen tally counter for colonies, cells, or anything else you're counting by hand. Tap anywhere to add one, with a haptic tick so you can count without watching the screen. Undo takes back a mis-tap, and Reset asks for a second tap before it clears. The count is saved as you go, so a screen lock partway through a plate doesn't cost you the count.