Smart incubator for small-scale algae cultivation with Internet-of-Things

Microalgae cultivation is a promising next-generation food production industry to produce sustainable and nutrient-rich food sources. However, the existing cultivation techniques are mostly designed for large-scale industrial applications, with minimal automation to monitor and control growth conditions for small-scale production. There is a need to explore the feasibility of implementing a small-scale indoor and home-based cultivation system. Therefore, this paper proposes the smart incubator, a novel automated solution which integrates a variety of sensors, actuators, controllers, and cloud communication for effortless cultivation of Spirulina. It utilises the Internet of Things (IoT) concept to monitor and control the vital factors affecting Spirulina's growth, such as growth medium, salinity, temperature, light intensity, pH, aeration, and agitation. Additionally, the proposed system is designed with several key functionalities including automated growth monitoring and controlling, auto-harvesting, and sustainable medium recycling. A comparative analysis of the growth rate of Spirulina cultivated with the proposed system and manual cultivation method highlighted that it is a potential solution that optimises Spirulina's growth. However, it should be brought into further investigation and refinements to increase its feasibility as a commercial product. The discovery of machine learning integration with the system is also vital to make it more flexible in keeping optimum growth conditions.