The Aquaculture Challenge is a competition held by Lake Superior State University. Local school teams are tasked with creating their own small-scale aquaponics system. In addition to creating the system, each team is provided an Arduino microcontroller and sensors to monitor the parameters of the system, such as air and water temperature, luminosity, and soil moisture. The last component of the system is a business canvas that will outline potential customers, methods of distribution, and other points to consider when creating a business. Each of these three sections of the challenge are important when starting and operating a full-scale aquaculture business, and many of these businesses fail because they did not consider one or more of these components.
The Challenge gives the students a few months to conceptualize and implement their system design, configure their Arduinos and sensors to monitor their system, and create their business model canvas. The students were asked to submit videos describing their systems, and they where they were judged in each of these three categories separately, as well as overall integration of them. The videos will be posted here, so stay tuned to witness the ingenious systems created by these brilliant students!
Registration runs from October 25–January 8. April 8th: Due Date for Submissions.