Every mass spectrometer should have a laser.

This is part of the reason that I’m working on a fully open-source MS instrument. It’s targeted for atmospheric monitoring rather than proteomics, but it’s a step toward making MS hardware much more accessible. Hoping to have it ready to unveil at ASMS 2026.

I understand, and I agree that it’s the right policy from a vendor point of view. But as an instrument guy it’s frustrating to know the hardware can do exactly what I want it to do, but the software is locked down so I can’t make it happen without a soldering iron.

My counter point to that is that if the user is doing something outside the expected use case there may be default (and unchangable) settings which skew their data in unexpected ways. Without access to the instrument settings such things are impossible to know.

One of the infinite uses for 80/20!

My institution is pressuring me to update from Windows 10 to 11 on the instrument computer. I’m fighting them for as long as I can, but I’m expecting something like this to happen when they finally win.

I completely agree. A couple years ago I published the open source Wisconsin Oscillator for powering ion guides and funnels. (doi.org/10.1021/jasm...). It’s now the basis for a fully open source MS system we’re developing and hoping to publish in the next year or two.

Thanks for posting Mike!

I’ve always believed that mandatory pre-processing of the raw data is a disservice to researchers. Raw data doesn’t need to be the default, but it should be an option.

This is a great idea! I wish we’d done the same with my now 3 year old.