🧩 Introducing Calibrations

An essential aspect of the Delvotest® Accelerator Smart (DAS) is its ability to assign colour values for every plate-well (see Working Principle article🔗). To make sure it does this consistently, it needs to regularly check whether it's able to identify individual plate-wells, and how assigned colour values perform against an external reference. This is precisely the purpose of the three standard calibrations it requires—position, uniformity, and colour. In this article, we will walk you through how to manage how often you calibrate (i.e., 'calibration cycles'), and how the Calibration tab works. 

Managing Calibration Cycles

The DAS allows you to customise how often you calibrate it, and when warnings are shown before calibrations are due. We advise calibrating at least every six months, with warnings scheduled for a month before being due. Here's how to managed these settings:

Step 1
Sign in as the administrator🔗.

Step 2
In the top-right corner, click on the Setup tab, then scroll down to the Device settings section.

Step 3
In the Device settings section, you should be able to see two parameters: Nr days Warning Calibration Valid, and Nr days Calibration Valid (see below). Following our advice, these should be set at 150 and 180 respectively. Once these parameters have been set, simply click on the Update button. The page should then refresh immediately with the values updated accordingly.

🔂 If you have multiple DASes, repeat this process for each.

Introducing the Calibration tab

To access the Calibration tab, first sign in as the administrator🔗 and then in the top-right corner click on the Calibration tab button. This is where you will be able to see a summary of when each type of calibration was last done, and where, by clicking on the respective Execute buttons, you will be able to start new calibrations.

Based on some simple colour coding, the Age [days] column's values indicate how often you've set your device to be calibrated. Here's what they mean:

🟩 Calibration is recent.

🟪 Calibration is within the valid performance period.

🟨 Calibration warning period reached.
(i.e., value set int the Nr days Warning Calibration Valid parameter).

🟥 Calibrations is due.
(i.e., , value set in the Nr days Calibration Valid parameter). 

// We need to also briefly talk about the Calibrations folder, and link it to its specific article, mentioning we'll come back to it later //

Next Steps

If you're following the Installation and Setup flow🔗, now that you've set up your calibration cycles, it's time to start with your first calibration—position. In the next article, we will guide you through what you'll need and how to do this.

⏭️ Next article: Position Calibration🔗