The “Deep Space Food Challenge” organized by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency aimed to develop innovative food systems for use in outer space. Our team, composed of diverse engineering backgrounds from various Canadian universities, successfully presented a full-scale food production system using crickets as a food source. This competition began in 2021 and recently concluded, with significant accomplishments in both hardware and software development.
As the embedded systems lead, my key contributions included:
- Designing three software frameworks for intercommunication via the MQTT protocol, handling nearly 50 instructions.
- Standardizing the system architecture by assigning IDs to 48 trays and 12 units to ensure seamless communication and avoid conflicts.
- Reducing execution time on embedded devices by parallelizing critical components using FreeRTOS, multi-core handling on ESP32, and threading on Raspberry Pi.
- Creating a central server on Raspberry Pi to manage incoming and outgoing MQTT messages and update the main JSON file, which is reflected on the website dashboard.
- Enabling full control of critical components (humidifier, heating, LEDs) and live footage viewing via the website.
- Adding security by setting up a VPN server on Raspberry Pi, restricting website dashboard access to VPN users only.
- Streamlining the production process to efficiently produce and install 48 electronic boards in the system.
The team, named CRCTS (Cricket Rearing, Collection, and Transformation System), achieved remarkable success, and I am proud to have been a part of this journey.
