• Control software instructs the shaker unit to slow down from 250 rpm to 30 rpm at regular time intervals (e.g. every 30 minutes), for a few seconds.

•  In these few seconds of slow shaking, the culture surfaces come temporarily to a rest (long enough for the culture surface to get close to horizontal, but short enough to prevent the cells from precipitating, or go into a stress modus); then 10 global shutter cameras simultaneously make photos of the (transparent) bottoms all 10 microplates ("on-the-fly")

• The images and their time stamps are stored on the internal SSD cards in the Growth profiler itself, but also in folders on the PC next to the Growth profiler; during an experiment users can already toggle through the images to get a first impression of the quality of their experiment (and - for example - judge if the cultures grow homogeneously)

• Because oxygen-transfer rates of 40 mmol/L. h are readily reached (at 225 or 250 rpm/50mm, and a culture volume of 0.25ml), exponential growth occurs up till cell densities of OD5 (E.coli) - OD10 (yeast) , equivalent to 2-4 gram dry wt /l , which allows an accurate determination of maximal growth rates 

• Image-analysis software ("Growthviewer", included) quantifies the cell density (using strain- and medium-specific calibration curves), and  produces growth curves for all 960 cultures (in case 96-well microplates are used); the biomass levels are expressed either in OD₆₀₀ equivalents, or as gram dry weight / l. 

• A basic method to quantify the maximal growth rate in the exponential phase is included in the software.

• All data (such as tables of cell densities in time, for all wells of all microplates, and maximal growth rates) are automatically exported as .csv files, that can easily be imported in spreadsheets, or other databases.

• The PC connected to the Growth profiler (and so the Growthviewer software) can be accessed remotely; you can follow the growth from home.

• All users are allowed to install the Growthviewer software onto their own computers; if the folders with images are copied, users can also further analyse their results at their own desk, or at home.

• For universities; multiple users (e.g. various students with their own projects) can use the Growth profiler simultaneously (e.g. one or two positions per student), and analyse the results on their own computers (after copying the relevant folders onto their own PC).