Amigos Colony

The Insect Glass Box

High-Level Project Summary

Our solution provides data about insect's lifecycle.Our project enables us to see the insect reaction in different conditions with a glass box that we can manipulate.The glass box is like our insect sanctuary. We can predict by project how long an insect will survive under a given circumstance or know what it will take to survive as long as possible.Learning and doing more researches about insects is very important.Insects pollinate many of our fruits, flowers, and vegetables.Insects are very important as primary or secondary decomposers. Without insects to help break down and dispose of wastes, dead animals and plants would accumulate in our environment and it would be messy indeed.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-lP3USMOCz9hd79fnibZOLaX_RMgOTB2/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110127891849941623923&rtpof=true&sd=true

Link to Final Project

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1za7_f5bIxFRisbVDwrllxHo-MxmhieQs/view?usp=sharing

Detailed Project Description

Our solution provides data about insect lifecycle to track and follow to use them to combat their loss, “The Insect Glass Box” gives us the ability to control insects' behaviors and show their reactions under the circumstances that we provide them by some sensors connected to the glass box as changing temperature and humidity, and trying different experiments as GM (genetically modification), and then the experiments held in that box help us to track, predict and follow insect lifecycle, the prototype works by connecting sensors to the glass box then observe insects behaviors, this sensors change the box temperature and humidity so that we can see changes happen to insects, our project benefit the world as it can take our knowledge about insects to the next level, to combat their loss on Earth due to human activity as GMO (genetically modified organisms) which cause the death of insects, as people used it in crops and plants to avoid insects to eat plants, it has bad effect on insects as the BT toxin used in maize make insects stomach rupture and other GMO used in milkweed plants that harms monarch butterflies, but after that, some insects make mutations to avoid the bacteria that kills it, and from that point we thought to make situations to the insects in the insects glass box to examine their ability of mutations against certain environments, and track its behavior then, and this matches the goals of our challenge, and even though taking the ideas to travelling to mars for living!! We cannot live there with the absence of insects, and our project can put the insects under the situations and circumstances that they should face on mars surface, and test their ability of mutations then, we hope then to achieve the Eco balance of insects biodiversity and combat their loss as our live hinge on their wellbeing, in this project we used a box made of glass, wires, small sensors of temperature, and finally, we used software to design the project with a 3D program.

Space Agency Data

We used open resources and links in our project but in the first place, we were inspired and guided by Nasa.

First of all, the video of the Nasa space apps challenge (Seeing the Unseeable - Viewing Bugs from Space)

We started searching about the challenge in other links while working on the project.

We used some of the resources from Nasa like Species Distribution Modeling Data, Earth Data Search, World View, Globe Visualization System, Biological Diversity and Ecological Forecasting Data Pathfinder, and JASMES Portal (JAXA Resources).

These resources helped us a lot.

Nasa’s research isn’t limited to space and astronomy they also study and make researches about insects and Entomology like ("Bug Off!").

Hackathon Journey

I think it was a very wonderful experience, I learned many things from this experience Such as I learned to search in the trusted sites, I have known new things about insects that I did not know before and I have known that insects are a very important thing in our lives; We chose this challenge because it was suitable for us and from our reading about it we knew a lot about it and loved it and we think the insects are an important thing in our life; When we come to any information, we search for it in order to link it to our learning outcomes, such as genetically modified organisms. in biology and we linked our project with mechanics in order to build the prototype; We used to help each other and always support each other to finish difficult tasks. If one of the team members had anything happened to him, we would support him and help him to finish his task or we would do the task instead of him and our team was always cooperative and yes teamwork and we do not like individual work; Yes, we would like to thank NASA Space apps for these wonderful challenges and they always hold the competition every year and we would like to thank the support team because they are always there to help us.