An automated monitoring system for mud crab molting integrated with a redesigned enclosure for soft-shell crab production

• Main Authors: Lee, Erin Marie T., Talastas, Jon Philip E., Limlingan, Chesedel Jobien M., Sy, Mikee Kaye T.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2017
• Subjects: Crabs; Image converters; User interfaces (Computer systems); Molting; Engineering
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/6843
• Institution: De La Salle University

The purpose of this study was to develop an automated monitoring system for crab molting integrated with a remodeled enclosure for soft-shell crab production. To do this, the study was divided into three main components--the enclosure, the module, and the software. For the enclosure, a commercially available industrial crate was retrofitted with a divider, rail, and cover to house two crabs separately. A motor was attached outside the last crate for the motion of the mobile module. For additional control, limit switches were mounted underneath the rails to stop the module over every crab cell. The module is the monitoring device of the system. It is powered by an 8000 mAh power pack and controlled by a Raspberry Pi 3 microcontroller. During operation, it goes through the enclosure array to capture overhead images of the crab cells. The Pi then processes the images to determine the number of crab profiles that are present in every cell. The software component of the system features two programs that utilize a WLAN common access folder for file sharing and an SSH protocol for communicating--one for image capture and processing, and one for the user interface. The program for the image capture and processing was made through python and OpenCV-- a class called simple blob detector was used for the detection of the crab simulations. For the user interface, a C# windows form program was used to show the status of crab cells based from the images and values provided by the module. In addition to the display, the UI program also copies the images and the data from the shared directory to a local folder for the storage. During development, issues were encountered in the alignment of the enclosures, water sealing and motion of the module and the detection of the software. These issues were eventually resolved and the project was completed appropriately.