WellSpot may be run in landscape or portrait mode on your iPad. Once you have decided on the preferred configuration, it is recommended to lock it.

The rectangle is a guide for positioning of the plate. Well A1 should be in the upper left corner.

The load button allows you to navigate to, and read a well-file. The file may previously have been saved from your computer to iCloud Drive provided that your Mac and iPad are associated with the same Apple ID. This is a single user situation. Or you may save it to a shared folder in DropBox. The folder should be shared among all users of WellSpot in the laboratory and with the iPad owner. Finally, you can send the well-file as an attachment to a mail addressed to an account on the iPad. You can then either ask Mail on the iPad to open the attached well-file directly with WellSpot or you can save the file under Files locally on the iPad for later use.

Once a sample set has been completed it may be time to load a new well-file. Clear data will do what it says and ensure that the Start over button does not remember the already completed set for example.

Errors may sneak in even under the best circumstances. Start over will jump to the beginning of the well-file

This is a toggle button allowing you to select either of the two supported plate sizes: 96 or 384 wells.

Right handed users will typically prefer to have the pipet in the right hand and handle sample vials and the WellSpot Next and Previous buttons with the left hand. And vice versa for left handed users.

This button opens a panel where you can read this or be referred to the WellSpot website.

To prevent accidentally hitting Clear data for example once pipetting is ongoing, it is advisable to lock all buttons except the Previous and Next buttons.

Once a well-file is loaded, its name will be displayed here.

Most pipetting errors are discovered right as they happen and may thus be corrected. The Previous button jumps to the previous line in the well file allowing you to empty a well that received a sample it should not and then proceed.

This is what WellSpot is all about: Jump to the next line in the well file, display the ID of the sample that the user should now pick, and illuminate the well where the sample should go.

Format. The input files for WellSpot are simple: Three columns separated by tabs. The first column holds the Sample ID, which is text, and the two next columns hold the coordinates of the well where this sample is to end up. These are integers – the rows are not indicated by letters as they are on the plates themselves.

Column 2 holds the row number and column 3 holds the column number. 96-well plate coordinates go from (1,1 to (8,12); while in a 384-well plate they go from (1,1) to (16,24).

If all three columns in a row contain a hyphen, i.e. the row reads: - tab - tab - return, then it is taken to mean that the current plate is done and a new plate should be placed on the rectangle. A call-out to do so is displayed where the sample ID is normally shown.

Well-file creation. The well-file may conveniently be created in a spreadsheet program like Excel or Numbers. It should then be exported as a tab-delimited text file. Some users will prefer to use a good plain text editor like BBEdit or TextMate. After the file has been named and saved, the file extension should be changed from .txt to .well so that WellSpot can recognise it.

If a sample set is too big for one plate, it is possible to change plate as you go along. When to do so is specified in the well-file. How is explained under heading The well-file in this user guide.