Visualizing physical data from IoT aquaponic systems

At HDDG16, Eric Maundu of Kijani Grows discusses a full-stack system for visualizing the characteristics of aquaponic systems.

Supplyframe’s mission is to create more access to information about electronics design and manufacturing. As such, we do meetups in San Francisco called, Hardware Developers Didactic Galactic. These events include talks by industry experts in hardware and software. The speakers are often building hardware for recreation or as part of their employment. The common thread is that they want to give a view “under the hood”.

At HDDG16, Eric Maundu of KijaniGrows talked about how he regularly monitors the aquaponics systems he creates in Oakland, CA. These are complex ecosystems with both fish and plants, symbiotically growing and eventually providing food.

A single board computer of his own making, it has an ATMEGA2560 on board, as well as a WiFi module running OpenWRT for communication with the network. Since this was custom hardware, the manufacturing of low runs of boards was challenge addressed later on in the talk (around 42:00). Troubleshooting spanned months before he could get to the software portion.

The system is vertically integrated, from custom hardware all the way up through the server system. Through an API made with NodeJS, MongoDB and InfluxDB, the system tracks the status of various sensors and relays connected to the board. The remote user can access the JSON data being generated from this system using an interface created with NodeJS, AngularJS and Javascript (explained around 30:00). Like other distributed systems, this requires mapping each signal in the database once it has been connected. This is then visualized using a web front end which has a similar visualization as the physical system (around 35:00). This can also be sent to a broadcast-like service such as Twitter (@kijanigrows_tst).

Learn More

Kijani Grows is also an educational program for schools to learn more about aquaponics systems and monitoring with electronics. Check out their site for more info about classes and purchasing hardware.