One step forwards, two steps back ...
... still, perfect weather for this sort of tinkering.
Progress includes getting 5 temperature sensors to work simultaneously (brood, ambient, outside [not necessarily the same in my setup] etc.) and dabbling with ThingSpeak (which I've got working without too many issues). Software changes to minimise power usage seem to work, but bigger savings from hardware changes are likely to be needed.
I could have more-or-less-real-time monitoring with ThingSpeak but it means I need to communicate with something that can connect to the internet ... the obvious choice is an ethernet board but that devours power (though, of course, with ethernet I'll have a wire so could do POE if I really wanted to). This really isn't an option for the apiary I want this for*. I've yet to look at WiFi but suspect I'm too far from a usable signal. I'm 600 metres from anywhere I have control over. Alternatives are therefore GPRS or RF. Some of the Xbee modules work over this sort of range but they're £££. There is, or was, a direct Xbee to internet gateway available (for £silly).
In the first instance I'll concentrate on getting a simple system that does multiple monitoring to an SD card. That should be possible for about a tenner + battery. I'll then worry about ThingSpeak integration and real time monitoring which increase the power needs and complexity issues. I've yet to investigate solar power ... seems a rather futile exercise with the weather we're getting at the moment :(
* or, in all honesty, my own needs ... I don't feel a need to sit in front of my web browser to determine whether my colony is queenless. However, it's still tempting :cool: