CAIRO, Egypt — A team from South Korea has won the Embedded Development competition which forms part of the Imagine Cup, the world's premier student technology competition.

The team, called Wafree, developed a machine which would be put in remote areas of Africa and used for breeding Coleoptera Lucanides insects with the insect lava being used in biscuits.

Over 170 types of insects were compared by the team in an effort to find a a food source for areas with little fertile land, water and manpower. Insect breeding has it problems as they are sensitive to sudden climatic changes.

The team created a semi-automated system for people with little experience in breeding insects or using computers. The design presented at the competition was the fourth generation of prototype. It has a camera which tracks the movement of the adult insects as inactivity would indicate a problem. This camera can also be connected using the internet or if this is not available basic cell phones using dual-tone mutli-frequency signalling. This enables remote experts to observe the health of the adult insects.

Under the breeding tray are multiple plastic boxes for storing the lava as they develop until they are large enough to harvest.

The three members of the team, Yoonji Shin, Kiburn Kim and Youngbu Park go to separate schools on South Korea and live in different regions.

Shin focused on the mathematics and algorithm development while Kim focused on software development whereas Park brought experience in developing embedded systems.

All entries in the competition, which was organized by Microsoft, had to use a E-Box embedded computer running Windows CE 6.0 and the winning team also used XML Web service, Silverlight, Virtual Earth and ASP.NET 2.0 and server software.

Second in the embedded development competition were the iSee team from China developed a human computer interface for blind people. Third were a team called Intellectronics from the Ukraine who developed a mobile e-health system.