For this challenge we decided to give it a one more try to the photobioreactor and design a more user friendly system in order to use it in our future workshops. As well as developing the code that I lost for the previous one and adding two sensors to system.
The spirulina needs to have aerification and movement for it to don’t sediment on the bottom and the other 2 important factors is to control that the temperature doesn’t go below 25º and that it doesn’t receives too much direct sunlight on the high UV rate hours. For it we added a thermistor sensor and a light sensor. The thermistor will be encapsulated on an epoxy resin and be in direct contact with water to monitorize an trigger the LEDs when the temperature drops dramatically. The light sensor for instance was aim to trigger a shadow when the sun was hitting strong but we didn’t manage to do it so we decided to create an interface that will constantly inform the user about the conditions of the spirulina, and if there is too much light trigger an alarm to call your roommate and close the curtains.
In this challenge, I was again in charge of the electronics part. We managed to solve some of the problems that we have previously which I think it helped us in our learning process. Unfortunately, we couldn’t make it for the first day of the challenge so we were happy with the good result we achieved on a short amount of time. Finally, I have to recognize that I ended up a bit bored of the PBR, for the next challenge I want to do more creative and challenging things. But since I’m interested in growing spirulina for my final project Bioborg which is going to be a series of wearables attached to my body where I will host the spirulina and keep it alive thanks to my body heat and the movements of my body for the aerification, like this I will be bioremediating air on the move that is to say negating my C02 footprint. Having the PBR is essential to mantian the spirulina alive while I develop the research on the wearables.
