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Thread: Hive monitoring - DIY

  1. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post
    Here's someone else doing the same sort of thing ... but this includes hive weights as well. Just a single (long and appended) post but some useful background info, particularly on load cells and displaying the data.
    I guess investigating solar power around the winter solstice is the ultimate in optimism
    The sensors /strain gauges seem to be a problem
    I might be inclined to zero them at the start of each day then add a fixed value and monitor the deviation instead
    They also seem to have some issues with stability even with small temperature shifts
    What put the tin hat on it for me though is "£60 per hive with some careful buying on eBay. "
    The polyhive it's monitoring would cost less than that
    He has done some good work though sorting things out

  2. #12
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    I'm not really interested in hive weights, not least because some of mine are bolted to their stands (long story) and with others I can use this sort of "manual" digital solution:
    20141228-0061.jpg
    However, his graphing solution is really nicely done through ThingSpeak.
    I've received the DS18B20's and they seem to work well, and are much more suited to being dumped into the middle of the broodnest or dangled out the side of the hive to measure ambient temperatures. I'm just checking several in series and seeing if the batch I've got have any rogues amongst them. However, I'm running out of connectors and things are starting to look a bit Heath Robinson I've also received a couple of 433MHz RF thingies but the documentation is very limited ... perhaps unsurprising for a bit under £2

  3. #13

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    Documentation whats that ?
    Mostly a jumble of odd characters and jangalese
    http://arduinobasics.blogspot.co.uk/...-tutorial.html
    are your modules anything like these ?

    I should add I haven't a clue if this would work but the key is that he isn't using any custom made libraries so theres a fair chance of getting something going
    Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 24-12-2015 at 12:19 AM.

  4. #14

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    A good place for presensitised copper boards
    https://www.jprelec.co.uk
    They have lots of stuff at good prices but not Arduino or ATTiny
    Min for free delivery is £30
    They don't always show in a Google search but are worth checking if you are making a few PCB's

    Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

  5. #15
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Default 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

  6. #16
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Accessing data from a remote non-WiFi site is also an issue at our mating site where we are wondering about a weather station. My brother (who knows such things) suggested this device, due out in weeks:

    https://shop.trycelery.com/page/electron

    There is more on the Particle range including the Electron here: https://www.particle.io/prototype

    I even have an offer of help .

  7. #17
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    That looks interesting ... I'm not familiar with Particle or their hardware, but it looks as though you code it (using a variant of C) via the web and then upload & run. I presume Particle handle the messages the Electron thingy transmits? Do you have an O2 signal in the hills as it looks as though that's the carrier they use?

    After getting the weather station sorted you should look into RFID-chipping your virgin queens, then monitor their return to the mini-nucs, wait a few days and then go and collect them. No wasted journeys!

    Bee.jpg

    PS Someone has already patented something similar
    PPS Long time since I looked in a hive, but I'm pretty sure the pic isn's a queen

  8. #18
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Was looking in some hives myself today, but only looking at bees milling about on the top bars (and the odd one inside my veil) on the occasion of well, you know what beekeepers do around the shortest day. Some sort of pagan ritual.

    Yes, there is a (weak) O2 in the vicinity of the mating site. Particle talk about the Cloud so I reckon they handle the uploaded data for you to collect somehow. I was musing myself earlier on monitoring queens in mating nucs. Realise that there was a twinkle in your eye as you suggested RFIDs but some folk paint their queens as virgins as they go into mating nucs so it should be possible to slap on a coloured metal disc and use a metal detector to let you know when the queen moves outside and back. We could have 100-150 virgins on the site at a time though ....

  9. #19
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Hi DR ... have you seen this article on using an UNO to upload hex files to an ATtiny85? Just in case you were still struggling to get the IDE to talk nicely to the chip.

    My RFID-chipped queens was tongue in cheek ... worth bearing in mind that the dab of paint probably weighs less than the RFID chip. She might be less aerodynamic and get scarfed by a swift/swallow/martin or not be fit enough to outrun "couch potato"-type drones with dodgy genes. However, with 100-150 to check you'll be up there every day anyway

  10. #20

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    Hi fatshark
    I was just programming the tiny85 using the Arduino uno
    Fairly straightforward to set that up and upload a sketch via the Arduino Uno
    Just a simple little timer project at the moment

    Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

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