Field notes · Guides · Essays
What you need, live culture vs powder, warmth, light and alkalinity — the honest first steps.
SpirulinaWhen to harvest, simple screening methods, storage, freshness economics.
SpirulinaA no-lab guide to reading Spirulina health: blue-green color cues, spoon-depth density tests, smell diagnostics and the cheap measurements worth taking daily.
SpirulinaHeaters, insulation and placement strategy for keeping Spirulina in its 30–37°C comfort band through cold months — warmth before anything else.
SpirulinaThe chemistry that feeds Arthrospira: bicarbonate as carbon source and shield.
PhotobioreactorsThe three physical levers — and why more of any one stops helping early.
PhotobioreactorsIn Spirulina culture, pH is not a knob — it is the readout of the carbon budget. Why alkalinity is the real control variable, and what that means for automation.
PhotobioreactorsAfternoon oxygen plateaus explained: supersaturation, self-poisoning of photosynthesis, and how a twin treats DO as a state variable rather than a footnote.
PhotobioreactorspH, temperature, wall irradiance, OD750, dissolved oxygen, conductivity — six channels each telling a different biological story about one culture.
PhotobioreactorsWhat Arthrospira actually is, and why the taxonomy matters for growers.
MicroalgaeGrazers, competitors, and using high pH as passive biosecurity.
TroubleshootingRising pH is carbon fixation's fingerprint — until it becomes starvation.
TroubleshootingBounded proposals checked by hard limits and a physics twin — never direct control.
AI + BiologyState variables, counterfactuals, simulation-first control of living systems.
AI + BiologyThe physics inside an algae digital twin: Droop quota kinetics, Steele's photoinhibition limb, Beer–Lambert self-shading and oxygen inhibition as state variables.
AI + BiologySense → twin → propose → verify → act. The layered loop architecture that lets software participate in biology without ever owning the pumps.
AI + BiologyHard-limit validators, counterfactual simulation and firmware clamps: three independent layers that let an AI propose while never risking the culture.
AI + BiologyPlain-language walkthrough of the two-check safety system plus physical backstops — and why doing nothing is usually the safe action.
AI + BiologyNo-jargon tour of an AI-tended photobioreactor: what it senses, how it decides, why every proposal passes gates, and what the human still owns.
AI + BiologyWhy vision inference belongs on-device at ~2 W: latency, privacy of your lab bench, and the reliability story cloud loops cannot tell.
AI + BiologyWhat a microscope camera can and cannot classify: healthy helix vs fragment vs not-spirulina — flags that hold pumps, never ones that open them.
AI + BiologyThe shared visual vocabulary problem: why mushroom mycelium and algae culture both defeat naive accuracy claims, and what honest flagging looks like.
AI + BiologySharing fitted twin parameters instead of images or traces: MQTT topics, bounds-checking, last-will obituaries and vandal-resistant averaging.
AI + BiologyInside Mycophyte: microclimate control, twin-guided decisions and bounded autonomy applied to fruiting chambers instead of photobioreactors.
MycologyPins, canopy and anomalies: what on-device detection honestly adds to a fruiting chamber, and why flags beat verdicts.
MycologyStart as one cell; end operating the reactor. A game model of this whole page.
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