I was briefly an insect farmer.

Some friends and I set out to prove the viability of an artificial breeding environment for the Black Soldier Fly (BSF) for use in digesting/reducing organic matter for composting.  Breeding these insects is notoriously difficult “in captivity”, so after we found a range of environmental conditions that produced mating, I implemented tools to measure and control temperature and humidity to maximize reproduction output. The system reported this data to Ubidots, an online data dashboard that allowed remote monitoring and data logging. During this project, I tested several communications modules: cellular/GPRS web data, RF communication between locally independent modules, and WiFi. After facing connectivity challenges due to the warehouse infrastucture – we ended up using cellular in one location and WiFi in the other location where networking was available.

The system was relatively simple. We started out thinking that we would have to use more sophisticated controls (such as PID) but upon testing the simple  system based on temperature upper and lower thresholds, we found that the conditions were sufficiently constrained.  We also needed to monitor the system remotely for safety reasons (and to know when to refill the humidifiers). 

This system enabled successful breeding and the project has since become the startup Larvio.

The tools I made were built on the Arduino microcontroller as a platform – since then, there have been microcontrollers introduced to the market such as the Particle Electron that are specifically made for IoT (Internet of Things) devices and would be better suited to the task.