Aquaponics is the merger of aquaculture and hydroponics to grow fish and plants together in one integrated system. The fish waste provides an organic food source for the growing plants, and the plants provide a natural filter for the water the fish live in.
One of the challenges of aquaponics is maintaining a healthy balance between the fish tank (aquarium) and plant tank (growbed/greenhouse), much of which must be done manually. A team of four CECS seniors from the Department of Manufacturing Systems Engineering and Management, however, developed and built Cloudponics, a prototype of an automated aquaponics system that could be controlled via the cloud. The system is capable of monitoring all data for an aquaponics system and adjusting the settings as needed. It can be accessed through a computer, website or mobile app and can be integrated into any commercial aquaponics system.
“For this Cloudponics system, you don’t need to do anything because the system will monitor the fish tank and plant tank using sensors,” explains Bingbing Li, assistant professor of manufacturing systems engineering and management, who advised the team. “It will control itself automatically.”
Cloudponics was so novel and well executed that it won the grand prize at the Small Manufacturers’ Institute Manufacturing Challenge Contest on April 18, 2016.
Held at the NTMA Training Center in Santa Fe Springs, the annual Manufacturing Challenge contest was originally established by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) over 30 years ago. Students choose their own projects and then design, manufacture and document the projects for display and evaluation. Judging categories include the project abstract, design, creativity, manufacturability, project management, presentation, documentation, health and safety, registration and judges’ discretion. Teams compete in two divisions, two-year and fouryear institutions; the best in show is awarded the grand prize. The 2016 competition pitted teams of students from 23 universities from California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Mexico.
In addition to the recognition accompanying the grand prize, the Cloudponics team—made up of Hyunjin Kim, Michael Mora, Navjeevan Sandhu and Rodrigo Soltero—received a $1,000 award.
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