Varroa estimations during winter.

[fatshark]

Assuming you have a mobile signal up in the hills (which, I appreciate, may not be the case ... after all, I've not got one in my lounge) there are cheap (£10-20) GPRS modules that will work with Arduino-chipped setups. I'm out of my depth with Arduino (DR, help me here) but I'm pretty sure you could have a system that ran off a battery, woke up periodically, measured stuff - temperature, humidity, "am I still in the same place" (GPS) - sent it off to the interwebs somewhere and, as if by magic, it would appear on your Apple Watch.

What? You've not got an Apple Watch?

PS Google is my friend ... what about this for starters and more discussion here

[gavin]

I had been charged with asking your advice the other day, but there wasn't enough time . Sadly, exactly where the hives sit there is no signal (*despite* all those wooden aerials ). But a weather station could go up the hill a little, where we go to make calls.

If it arrives on my (Android) HTC I'll be delighted (and amazed!).

The stuff in the links you posted is not terrifying, though the last time I put electronics together from scratch I think I was still at school. Similar to DR's FM video I made a short-wave transmitter from a piece of cast-off formica, an ex-army (I think) crystal, some bits of wire and a transistor, assorted resistors and capacitors. Even hooked it up to the output from an old record player via a transformer to give it interesting AM modulation. Those were the days! Anyway, Jeff is our technical director, I'll likely leave the technical stuff to him.

Mobile reception is a bit flaky in my lounge too. Tend to have calls with my head pressed against the front window, scaring the few neighbours that walk by with their dogs.

[fatshark]

This guy has built a weather station and mobile phone/internet link. Really neat. I particularly like the barometric pressure reading from the half-inflated glove. He seems to have windspeed, direction, temperature, pressure and rainfall (at least).

toptal-blog-image-1373445195684.jpg

He made it sound straightforward and seems to have solved all the problems. The system is still working 3 years on. I suspect he's quite clever

I built one of those FM transmitters with my son. We used it in the middle of a housing estate. The statute of limitations on that crime has now passed ...

The electronics these days is possibly the more straightforward part of this type of project. You need to be able to write code (or copy and butcher someone else's).

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Gavin
You can do it with an a8 gsm tracker
They are about £10 eBay
The options are either it rings your mobile when it hears noise above a preset level
Or you ring it and listen to what it can hear
It's a sort of miniature mobile phone
The gsm tracking won't work in UK though
You can have it just text you though

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[The Drone Ranger]

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[The Drone Ranger]

http://www.mathewjenkinson.co.uk/adv...ni-a8-tracker/

Here's a similar unit but £19
I wouldn't pay that
Anyway the customer reviews give an idea of what it can and can't do
Battery life is short and it switches off when charging so you can't just plug it into a power pack to get more time

Regards Arduino I guess that could be the best way but it would need some research
Presumably a gsm shield and some sensors will have already been used in a lot of projects
Must do some googling



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[The Drone Ranger]

"The micro to nano SIM adapter is included in the box. It is recommended to power the board with an external power supply that can provide between 700mA and 1000mA. Powering an Arduino and the GSM shield from a USB connection is not recommended, as USB cannot provide the required current when the modem is in heavy use"

That's a little clip from the official Arduino GSM shield blurb £50 (ouch)
You could get a Chinese copy but getting it working would be a big challenge

By all accounts if you use SMS messaging functions its power up/down is faster so its less power hungry
I suspect though if your site has poor mobile signal strength and no mains power then its a car battery or settle for data logging to a sim and reading it into Excel later

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[The Drone Ranger]

http://www.mathewjenkinson.co.uk/bee...t-development/

This chap is doing the work and it looks like he has thought the problem through
His take on hive monitoring is to use the Raspberry Pi
That will present some power issues I think so car battery or something to budget for lol!

Anyway the project is well down the road and he seems friendly enough so it would be worth reading
I suspect he would be helpful and might be glad of some collaborators with hives
What you you think ?
I going to stop swamping this thread with posts now

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[alclosier]

You might want to look at this: https://hackaday.io/project/2453-ard...eehive-monitor

The code would need some tweeking as xively is no longer free but there are various other options to send the data via GPRS. The deep sleep mode was very interesting reading as he goes into great depth about the current draw in different states. I think the pi would draw too much power from the last time I checked.

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[The Drone Ranger]

Thanks alclosier
Yes the Pi would need a decent size battery I feel
Dont have much to add at the moment still doing a bit of research
http://digistump.com/oak/
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2621739739...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
Thats a tiny controller that can be programmed with the Arduino IDE
http://www.instructables.com/howto/digispark+attiny+85/

I have ordered one from China £1.25 because I like to make things hard for myself by saving £1.74 on the UK price
Goodness knows when it will arrive