Consibio chooses Toit to optimize bioprocesses
Toit customer Consibio brings unique biology and technology expertise together, enabling companies across the bio-industry to minimize their impact on the environment. They are building their products on the Toit platform to reduce their time to market, enhance their flexibility and even reach new customers for which implementation of IoT devices was not possible before Toit.
Biological processes are notoriously complex and difficult to control. The three founders of Consibio are on a mission to rethink these industries with data and biological insight. With a background in biotech-engineering, they know the bioprocess industry can tweak its methods to optimize biological process yields while reducing its environmental impact.
“Our mission is to change the world by digitalizing bio-industries dedicated to reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals” — Consibio
The three Consibio founders Johan, Emil and Søren in action. Credits: Lars Kruse
Optimization of bioprocesses can only be achieved through relevant data acquisition and analysis. To this end, Consibio builds hardware customized to the data that needs to be collected and the location where this data needs to be measured. Their hardware always includes a connectivity component so the data collected can be sent to the cloud where it is visualized and analyzed before it becomes actionable.
Resolving pain points with Toit
Initially, Consibio was working with a patchwork of IT components: a number of sensors connected to microcontrollers, themselves connected to a Linux gateway working with an established IoT platform that ensured connectivity to the cloud. All these different units had to be programmed using various languages such as Python, NodeJS, C and C++. And while it was possible to update the gateway from the cloud infrastructure, it was not possible to update the sensors connected to this gateway.
This layered infrastructure was not only expensive to maintain, but the connectivity gateway also created a bottleneck for the operation of sensors deployed in the field, rendering scaling up nearly impossible.
Consibio quickly realized that the Toit platform for IoT was addressing all their pain points:
- With Toit, the connectivity to the cloud is already included in each individual device. This operating system can be deployed on an ESP32 and used for managing all other components hooked to the microcontroller. There is no need for a costly connectivity gateway.
- The high-level and intuitive Toit language can be used to program all components of the newly designed hardware.
- The Toit console helps manage an entire fleet of devices and allows for fast and secure over-the-air updates of some or all of the programs running on each device.
- Individual programs solving different tasks on the device can be installed in parallel, without affecting each other. These programs can be quickly updated independently and remotely as many times as needed.
- Toit is so efficient that it enables working with battery-powered devices, allowing deployment in remote areas.
“Before Toit, we couldn’t provide battery-powered hardware to our clients. Now we can deliver battery-enabled devices and still maintain the functionalities required to deliver biological insight. Battery-powered devices enable us to expand our potential markets, as they are necessary for implementation in certain remote places.” — Emil Jakobsen, Consibio Co-founder
Monitoring and tweaking bioprocesses
Consibio’s engineers got started with Toit using a development kit and realized quickly that the Toit language was very easy to pick up. Shortly after, they were able to deploy 10 Toit-enabled proof-of-concept units in a biofactory that grows insects for sustainable protein production. They are now increasing their fleet of custom-made devices at the farm to make sure that conditions are optimal for insect growth and subsequent protein yield. The system is set to trigger SMS alarms when the temperature and humidity measures fall outside predefined ranges.
“Toit provides us with a better way to manage all of the devices — it also enables us to simplify our system by eliminating the need for a connectivity gateway, allowing for real cost optimization of our platform.” - Søren Jessen Kjær, Co-founder Consibio
One other Toit-powered device is acting directly on the bioprocess it monitors: deployed to control for the presence of malodorous air, the device is able to modify the position of an industrial valve that controls the airflow through a biofilter.
Saving time and money
Hardware costs used to be a big issue for scaling up a profitable business, but since the Toit platform can run on a low-cost microcontroller such as an ESP32, Consibio’s device prices have been reduced by a factor of 10. This leads to significant benefits for the potential sales volume and profitability, especially since Consibio is in the phase of expanding its business with several thousand devices for bio-industries related to green energy, food and feed production.
Besides, the time spent on hardware service in the field has been reduced by several hours each month thanks to the level of control that the Toit platform gives Consibio to manage their fleets remotely.
Furthermore, Consibio explains that before Toit, over-the-air updates used to be much less streamlined; an application update could take up to 15 minutes to deploy. With Toit-enabled devices, it is now done in seconds. This allows Consibio to focus on core activities that add value to their customers.
“Ultimately Toit enables us to focus on our core services knowing that our entire hardware fleet is in safe hands.” — Johan Egsgaard Thomsen, Consibio Co-founder
Consibio has several other examples of how their biotech expertise helps improve the environment. If you want to know more about that or other great examples we encourage you to contact Consibio via their website: consibio.com.
If you would like to try out Toit just sign up on toit.io or reach out to the sales team directly at contact@toit.io.
Authors: Céline Materna, Content and UX Research Manager, and Nils Westerlund, Lead Product Manager
