Be Aqua Farm is a company that creates self-sustained symbiotic systems for production of organic food. More closely, they use wastewater from fish tanks to irrigate and grow plants, which use the nutrients and filter the water. After the irrigation, the clean and filtered water is taken back to the fish tanks, creating a continuous cycle.
Although, this may look simple, the process is quite complicated and requires strictly controlled environment in terms of monitoring and control of the Humidity, Temperature, Carbon dioxide and Oxygen, Light and Ammoniac levels. So, how did they manage to organize all this without causing damage to the plants or the fish? They chose KHAL.
The company decided to embed their planting containers and fish tanks with all the necessary sensors/actuators for environmental control and connected them to KHAL. For this, they can have a real-time overview of the fully-automated process, which now relies on control rules created in the system.
Example: Carbon dioxide level in the fish tanks should not exceed 20 mg/liter because the fish may become slow and lifeless. Therefore, the owners created a rule in the system which is: “IF” the level of carbon dioxide reaches 20 mg/liter, “THEN” turn on the pump to water the plants.
With numerous rules for the different nodes, whenever a criterion is met, an environmental actuation takes place in order to keep the fish healthy and keep the plants growing.
This system represents a perfect example of how IoT really works and how it can integrate different systems, therefore creating countless possibilities and smart, unconventional solutions.