Colony I died after about 2 weeks due to poor ventilation. I was struggling to keep up because I rushed into the project in order to get it going. I had to push Breadbox III to its limit, by setting up InfluxDB, and hastily coded ESP8266’s to monitor temperature and humidity. I found that reptile thermal bulbs are not useful for this type of thing. What was most useful at the end of Colony I’s life was a personal heater directed into the intake fan of the chamber, and the humidifier pouring in around 60-70% intensity. Too much humidity, appropriate heat, and poor ventilation makes the air too thick and suffocates the crickets. While they want high humidity, they also need moderate circulation. It seems like moderate humidity and low circulation would be better. 

I’m not starting Colony II until I finish Breadbox IV. It became very apparent that Breadbox III, which was the first truly functional Home Automation/IoT Server, was a piece of test equipment and not really suited to be infrastructure responsible for keeping something alive, even if it was just a few dozen crickets. I need to build something stronger and more robust before I try again.