Tool:Introducing eLabFTW : free open source electronic lab notebook

Question

[Nico]

Hello everyone,

I work in Institut Curie, Paris, France, as an engineer in a research lab. I developed a php/mysql application to keep track of experiments (lab notebook). It's free and open source and I believe this community could be interested in such a thing.

You can run it on a server, for a whole departement if you want, or just locally on your machine.

Please visit the website and try the demo: http://www.elabftw.net https://demo.elabftw.net

Any question, suggestion or remark you might have, I want to read it :) Your input help me makes a better software.

Thank you :D

Regards,

~Nico

[Caluna]

Dear Nico,

We started using eLabFTW in a sort of evaluation phase for some members of our group.

I have two additional questions: Is it possible to share the templates with the members of the group? So far, we are able to see the experiments from the group members, but not the templates. I think this would be a good feature, as this would improve interoperability.

Linkage of an Experiment with the database can only be done in one direction (so you can see the experiments which are connected to the plasmid/antibody...). I think it would be quite helpful, if this connection can also be seen from the experiment, e. g.: which antibody was used for this exp.

Best regards
André

[Nico]

Hello,

Thanks for the idea, I'll add it to the list :)

On a database item, look for the link icon. It will show you which experiments were made with this item ;)

Regards,
~Nico

Answer 1

[Caluna]

Hi Nico,

I installed eLabFTW and it worked really great. My plan is to use it in our group, and everything worked like a charm. Unfortunately, the export function did not work: neither the pDF export, nor the export as zip-file? I only get a blank screen. Do you know, if there is some kind of misconfiguration?

Best
André

EDIT: found the solution here: http://mpdf1.com/manual/index.php?tid=406

[Nico]

Hello André,

I'm glad eLabFTW is working great for you. Don't forget to update regularly to get the latest new features :)

So you went with the mpdf lite solution ? I'd say increasing the memory in php.ini is easier and better, because now you changed the code, and git will probably complain at some point during an update. Not a big deal (very easy to 'fix'), but it's «cleaner» to increase memory for php (unless you can't of course).

I'll add this to the documentation :)

Cheers,
~Nico

Answer 2

[Mary]

Hey, that looks terrific. I just tried out a few things for now, but I think I'll download it and try it out for storing some things I'm working on.

A couple of quick comments--feature requests:

1. I tried to "duplicate" an experiment. It copied everything in the text box area fine, but not the image I had attached to the original. I actually think that might be ok this time, but maybe not always the intention--the attachment could be a standard protocol or something. It might be cool if that was an option (also copy attachments?)
2. Feature request just for my personal organization: I wish the title of a duplicate would either force a new name (or maybe add a number to the name? Like My Experiment 2?). That way you wouldn't have a bunch of identical titles.
3. In the duplication event, I found that I don't actually want the results to duplicate--I'm going to create new ones with the same protocol. I think this gets back to the other idea--if I could duplicate protocol but not results that might be handy. As it was I had to swipe out the results for the second iteration, you know?

Not requirements at all--just ideas I had as I was trying it out. Check with others and see if those are useful directions or not--I'm not working at the bench now so maybe my needs are different.

If you want to look at what I was doing, I was creating the GM12878 browser queries. Feel free to modify/delete/whatever. It was just a testing example.

Nice job.

[Nico]

Dear Mary,

Thanks for trying out eLabFTW :)

1. Yes, it is on purpose that the duplicate action ignores attached files. I thought that would be what most users want. But having a dialog that asks what to duplicate is a very good idea that I will probably implement.

2. Again, good idea, will implement.

3. I didn't understand. What do you call «results» ?

Regards,

~Nico

[Mary]

When I copied the "experiment", it copied everything in the text box. In my text box I have Goal/Procedure/Results--it's one big text box. I guess I'm saying that maybe if it was broken into separate boxes--one for goal/procedure and one for results. And then I could copy goal/procedure and then add new results (either from a repeat run, or with some procedure modifications). Maybe sometimes people will want to duplicate results--but not always. If results was a second text box area, with option to copy? Does that make more sense?

[Nico]

Are you aware of the template system ?

Go into your control panel (ucp.php) and edit your templates there ! I think this is what you need :)

[Mary]

Ah, no, I missed that--sounds like it might be the thing I need. I'll try it out after the holiday weekend. Great idea.