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Thread: Hive monitoring - DIY

  1. #21

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    The project I would be most interested in would be mating data
    That's the number and length of flights
    The timing and the weather conditions

    So
    What would we need?
    what do we know?
    We know the flight will be in good weather?
    There will be a minimum temperature?
    The flight will be in the afternoon?
    The flight will last less than 20 minutes?
    There will be increased hive activity (noise)before and after the flight?

    What would we need to monitor

    RTC or LDR ? probably both because poor light represents bad conditions and we need to know and log the actual time of day
    Noise detection we need to know when the Queen is about to leave
    20 minute timer function the duration of her flight
    We need to video mini nuke entrance (probably cheap micro or mini camera)
    We need to log time of day, barometric pressure, light conditions, and temperature
    Storage on an SD card of that video
    Either manual or wireless DATA collection every day

    Possible extras might be wireless or GPRS etc

    I'm good for the 20min timer lol!

    Next step locate and cost the components calculate energy requirements storage etc
    Then break the thing down into stages and build /test the various elements
    Plug them all together into one program and unit
    Design a PCB or shield and etch it (I can do the etching part Lol!)

    What do you think ?

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  2. #22
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Blimey ... I might regret mentioning queen mating

    As an aside ... some of this information is already known from empirical observation 'back in the day'. I'd have to look in some old texts, but suspect Eckert has stuff on this perhaps. Jon will also have an idea of what's in the literature.

    About the only thing I know nothing about is the video (though this might have possibilities) ... and this is critical as it's only by reviewing this you'll have the exit and entry times, and that means the quality has to be good enough to distinguish the queen from the attendant workers. There might be ways of triggering this by monitoring hive entrance activity by having some sort of detector quantifying bees in/out and a threshold - see energy comments below.

    The SD card shield (I actually think t's called a data logger shield) for an Arduino has an RTC. Both are trivial to use. You can get these for less than £3. They also have a prototyping area onboard. The SD card libraries are bulky. Temperature/humidity have already been discussed (and I'm liking the DS18B20's for the former as they work underwater, which might be useful ). Light is trivial with a photodiode or you can use an LED. Barometric pressure is cheapy cheapy (£1 max).

    I'd be surprised if the hardware above - other than the battery - was more than £12-15. Power - the camera linked above claims 60mW @ 15fps. I suspect the data logger would also be quite power hungry (mine's currently - no pun intended - in use, so I can't measure it) when writing all that video output. That being the case, battery life is going to be an issue for any sort of extended or unattended use. Therefore, any way of reducing recording/monitoring time - particularly of video - would be beneficial, hence the comment above about monitoring entrance activity (or perhaps noise??). If my estimates of video size are correct you'll need to be writing 2Gb+ files (640x480x30x30 compressed) to SD card ... I'm not even going to think about wirelessly transmitting that amount of information any sort of distance

    Finally, there's an interesting intro to arduino-based data loggers here which covers the SD/RTC shield and temperature/humidity sensing (there's also lots of detail on the IDE/programming which is probably less relevant)

  3. #23
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post
    .... as it's only by reviewing this you'll have the exit and entry times, and that means the quality has to be good enough to distinguish the queen from the attendant workers. ....
    Small metal foil disc on the queen. Paired micro metal detectors (do they exist? I'm sure I've seen pictures of this) at entry and exit of the tunnel to give you 'in' and 'out' times.

  4. #24
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    I'm sure DR posted a link to a 'bee counter' earlier ... I went looking and got distracted by the Kraftwerk:Coldplay YouTube video. The bee counter didn't record the Q, just counted the, er, bees. It might have been this Instructable. There's also more here on hive tool.org ... who also have a Raspberry Pi-based 'solution' to hive monitoring which won a Bayer Bee Care award. There might be ways to monitor activity on a daily basis, establishing a threshold for 'normal' activity above which the video turned on if a) it was between midday and 5pm, b) not raining, c) etc.

    I'd be wary about marking a virgin queen with anything other than paint (and I'm aware that those that do this don't report any greater losses during mating flights) ... though perhaps you could use fluorescent paint, a tunnel entrance and a couple of bright UV LEDs, coupled with the type of counter outlined above (which also detects directionality [if that's a real word?]). I'd imagine a big slab of metal strapped to your back would be a bit of a passion-killer ...

  5. #25

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    I have a barometric sensor that works well
    The stuff that is "known" about queen mating needs a bit of checking I think
    For Amm certainly there are lots of Beowulf stuff to check
    Noise at the entrance will be a good trigger because the timing and weather help pinpoint it
    I feel a Venn Diagram coming on

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  6. #26

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    Hi all,

    I was speaking to my brother Gavin about this project when we were together over Christmas. I know nothing about bees other than that which Gavin has shared with me, which is fascinating, but only an insignificant fraction of what you all know.

    I do know electronics, and software a bit, and I am happy to help, if that would prove useful. I've never built anything with Arduinos or similar, but I do know micro-controllers - I design them (OK, not the whole thing, just some bits of them). I have a colleague who does build things such as a Raspberry Pi powered monitor for the temperature (and pressure possibly?) in his house (and shed!), data which he publishes to the web. That data goes to xively.com which I think is no longer free. I know that you have been looking at thingspeak.com which does seem to be free for this sort of data.

    I had started thinking about this a few months ago and followed a few links from hackaday.com to look at hive monitoring projects that people had put together.

    A conversation with my colleague directed me to the Particle Electron which I imagine being a pretty important component if you wanted to have data come back to you in (near) real-time from remote sites. But clearly this is a lot more money than would seem reasonable to spend per hive. So what about a system where one of these was placed at a site, as the data gathering and communicating "site controller", and each hive had something else much cheaper.

    Having a look around today I found this:
    http://readwrite.com/2015/05/11/chip...rnet-of-things
    With bluethooth and wi-fi built in to the C.H.I.P. it looks like a great way to create a little network to pull all the data back to a central "site controller" (the Particle Electron). It is also set up to be powered with a standard Li-ion single-cell battery which is pretty handy for a "portable" application.

    From what Gavin has said to me, any such hive monitoring system would be one for the future. He suggested that a weather station might be the first target. I just wondered if choosing hardware now which would suit future needs might make life easier in the long run.

    Cheers

  7. #27

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    By the by somebody did post a bee counter but it wasn't me
    It used Ir detection which I'm not sure about for bees
    Might be better for detecting beekeepers

    I sticking with noise at the moment but bees can be charged up by walking over an electrostatic plate
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/eart...r-spiders.html
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    Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 29-12-2015 at 12:30 AM.

  8. #28
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Thanks bruv'!

    Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post
    I'd imagine a big slab of metal strapped to your back would be a bit of a passion-killer ...
    Works for me!

  9. #29
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger View Post
    By the by somebody did post a bee counter but it wasn't me
    It used Ir detection which I'm not sure about for bees
    Might be better for detecting beekeepers

    Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk
    Bees have hot thoraxes when they are ready to fly or coming home. The big thoraxes of drones might be able to be differentiated but queens and workers could be similar.

  10. #30

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    Thanks Gavin I didn't know that


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