2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Mosquito larvae can be found in stagnant water in abandoned or discarded tires. The impact of the microclimate environment and the water properties in these tires may be monitored for an extended period of time. In order to assist the research on this aspect, a mosquito breeding environment testing instrumentation was created by a capstone project team. The capstone project was started in Spring 2022 and concluded in Fall 2022. Five undergraduate engineering technology students have conducted this capstone project, and an engineering faculty member advised this capstone project. This prototype of a mosquito breeding environment testing instrumentation has a testing chamber that can contain tires partially filled with water inside, and a sliding light source to emulate the light condition variations. The testing instrumentation has sensors to obtain data such as ambient temperature, humidity, CO2, and light intensity. In addition, the testing instrumentation can measure water properties such as water temperature and pH, and it can send the data over the internet. A user can also control the sliding light source over the internet. A GUI program using the .NET framework can access data and control the instrumentation. The images can be stored on a local microSD card. For the main controller, a BeagleBone Black board was used, and the sliding platform was implemented using a stepper motor. In this paper, the details of the mosquito breeding environment testing instrumentation and the educational lessons learned via this engineering capstone project are presented.