Everything we've written
Deep technical records of how MAIN works, plain-language explainers, and hands-on guides to growing Spirulina at home — 19 articles and counting.
The engineering and biology, in real depth.
The Six Signals MAIN Senses — and What Each Reveals
pH, temperature, light, optical density, dissolved oxygen, and TDS each tell a different biological story about a living culture.
Read the articleThe Digital Twin: Predicting Growth with Droop and Steele
A physics-based model of nutrient quotas and light saturation lets MAIN forecast growth before it ever moves a pump.
Read the articleAlkalinity as a Control Variable
For Spirulina, bicarbonate chemistry is carbon source, pH buffer, and biosecurity all at once — which is why MAIN controls alkalinity, not just acidity.
Read the articleDissolved Oxygen: When Photosynthesis Poisons Itself
In a bright, dense culture, photosynthetic oxygen can supersaturate to levels that inhibit the very growth that produced it.
Read the articleBounded Autonomy: Keeping AI Proposals Safe
MAIN lets an AI propose experiments but never lets it act unchecked — every command clears a deterministic rule gate and a physics simulation first.
Read the articlePhycoNet: Federated Learning Across Reactors
Reactors trade the learned parameters of their digital twins — never raw culture data — so the network converges on a strain’s productive regime faster than any one reactor could alone.
Read the articleInside MAIN's Control Loop: Sense, Model, Decide, Verify, Act
How MAIN closes the loop around a living spirulina culture on a single Raspberry Pi, and why every decision passes through a safety gate that fails closed.
Read the articleMachine Vision for Spirulina: Catching What the Numbers Miss
MAIN's six numeric sensors describe the water; an optional camera describes the cells — and a picture catches the contamination, stress, and morphology that numbers alone smear into noise.
Read the articleMAIN in plain language, no jargon required.
Why Spirulina Is a Cyanobacterium, Not an Alga
Spirulina is a photosynthetic bacterium, not a plant-like alga — and that single fact reshapes how you feed, buffer, and protect the culture.
Read the articleWhat Is MAIN? A Plain-Language Guide
MAIN is a small AI that tends a living spirulina culture, reading its water minute by minute and making careful, double-checked corrections so the culture is never left to guesswork.
Read the articleHow MAIN Keeps Your Culture Safe
MAIN's AI is allowed to suggest changes, never to make them on its own — every move clears two independent safety checks, with hardware limits and a physical stop button behind them.
Read the articleHands-on home cultivation guides and troubleshooting.
How to Start a Home Spirulina Culture
With a live starter, a clean vessel, and warm alkaline water, a first Spirulina culture is one of the most forgiving microbes you can grow at home.
Read the articleZarrouk Medium and Nutrients
Spirulina's classic recipe is built around a mountain of bicarbonate — the ingredient that feeds it carbon and holds its pH high at once.
Read the articleLight, Temperature, and Mixing
Three physical levers set how fast Spirulina grows — and each has a sweet spot where more is worse, not better.
Read the articleReading Your Culture: Color, Density, Smell
Before any sensor, your eyes and nose tell you most of what a Spirulina culture is doing — if you know what to look for.
Read the articleHarvesting and Using Fresh Spirulina
A fine mesh, clean hands, and prompt use turn a jar of blue-green culture into fresh food — with a few real food-safety rules.
Read the articleTroubleshooting: Contamination, Crashes, pH Swings
Most Spirulina failures trace to a handful of causes — and high pH gives you a powerful recovery tool the culture's rivals don't share.
Read the articleTroubleshooting: pH and Carbon Limitation
In a Spirulina culture, pH is not a number to force — it is a live readout of the carbon budget, and reading it that way tells you exactly when to feed.
Read the articleKeeping a Home Spirulina Culture Warm Through Winter
Your culture came from warm soda lakes, so through the cold months holding its heat — not chasing light — is what keeps it alive and quietly growing.
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