Hive monitoring - DIY

[The Drone Ranger]

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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[Colin]

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

[The Drone Ranger]

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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[gavin]

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

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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.

[greengumbo]

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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I posted about the beecounter on some other thread but I am now totally out my depth !

It was an instructable I saw using arduino and simple gates but I reckon it could be modded to detect a queen with a metal disc on her going past the sensors.

[fatshark]

I posted about the beecounter on some other thread but I am now totally out my depth !

Don't worry GG ... we've already built a prototype for you to try:
hotty-clicker.jpg
Happy New Year

PS How are your apiaries with all that rain? The burn here flooded and washed the bridge to my bee shed some distance downstream ... have yet to review the damage but think things should be OK

[greengumbo]

Don't worry GG ... we've already built a prototype for you to try:
hotty-clicker.jpg
Happy New Year

PS How are your apiaries with all that rain? The burn here flooded and washed the bridge to my bee shed some distance downstream ... have yet to review the damage but think things should be OK

If I combine that technology with a 4 year old learning to count past 100 then we could be onto something.

My apiaries are flood free as yet. Some burns nearby one are looking a bit full though. Hope the bee shed does not become an Ark.

[The Drone Ranger]

I posted about the beecounter on some other thread but I am now totally out my depth !

It was an instructable I saw using arduino and simple gates but I reckon it could be modded to detect a queen with a metal disc on her going past the sensors.

You are not out of your depth greengumbo
Your input is Key to any project like this

This is an early stage discussion about what elements we think might be worth attempting to measure and record
Now, some of that involves poking around the available hardware to see what might fit together, and what other people have tried
And some thinking about how to power that equipment, without a massive battery, or horrendous over complication
We have Colin to help sort out all that technical stuff

But there is a parallel discussion
What do you think would be the most interesting thing to measure? or what would you like to know ??
Thats where we are at the moment !

Lets say you want to know if the queen is off on a mating flight -- how can you tell she has left the hive ?
Thats a many sided problem but the very first step is possibly - "where is she leaving from?"
A full sized hive ? A small entrance like a Snelgrove board or Nucleus ? maybe an Apidea or a Keiler mininuc with a very small entrance
Where will your own new queens be leaving from ??

Lets take metal disc you mention, will she be able to mate with that attached ,would a dab of paint do instead , will birds see her more easily.
One of my "brainwaves" was UV paint, but although that's beyond our eyes, bees and worse still birds see colour and pattern in UV very clearly (annoying that ! )
So if the bees dont bump her off then the birds probably will
What do you think ?? Have you marked virgin queens and got away with it ??

When it comes to 'in hive temperature sensors' I'm clueless, I don't know what information can be gleaned from them, so I haven't put much thinking into where they should go etc
"As long as they are out of the way for inspections" thats been my only thought so far
Maybe you have some thoughts on that, and what info they can tell us etc ??

Then theres the environment (weather station) thats all valuable stuff )
Gavin is very interested in that because his mating apiary is very remote I think
Also that historic data could tell us a lot about flying days and hence why certain honey crops succeeded or failed etc

Its a broad church, so forget about the electronics if thats not your thing, and just pitch right in with your ideas

[The Drone Ranger]

Thanks Gavin I didn't know that


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[fatshark]

Hi Colin
Welcome aboard. I hope Gavin has shared more than some bee knowledge ... I can thoroughly recommend his lime cut comb honey
I suspect there's interest in these things for different reasons, though this hasn't really been discussed. Nevertheless, there is shared interest here and elsewhere (going by the proliferation of other more or less developed solutions) in monitoring a variety of environmental variables in and around a hive. Fundamentally, with a couple of exceptions (wind speed?) these are no different from the weather station that Gavin is interested in. The weather station also shares the same problem of power supply and communications - most apiaries lack a mains supply (as does Glen Whatever where Gavin needs to confirm it's raining and windy ) and most have no WiFi within range. Therefore as a proof of principle a weather station is as good a place to start as any.

I know precious little about beekeeping, but what I do know dwarfs my knowledge and understanding of electronics. I've therefore gone down the Arduino route as most of it is almost plug and play. I know enough C to be dangerous and have had no problem getting the environmental monitoring sorted. I've got plans to change the hardware a bit to enhance battery life from a week or so to a couple of months. All this simply logs things to SD card. This is probably OK for my specific interests in hive monitoring, but - in comparison to the sort of real time data presentation possible via ThingSpeak or xively.com - is pretty poor and certainly aesthetically disappointing. As an aside, that might be the first time aesthetics was mentioned on SBAi ...

I read the stuff on the Electron with interest. I could imagine the sort of local bluetooth/RF/WiFi communication within an apiary to a 'server' (the Electron) that then sends the data by text message. Surely this would then also need a "mobile number to internet gateway" of some sort? At least if the data was to be made public, or shared amongst a group. This is one area I'm clueless about. I did look at the Xbee RF hardware that allow serial communication. It seemed relatively straightforward to handle incoming data in a way that could be made web-friendly. However, the Xbee modules are limited in range (at least those that are affordable, or perhaps even legal) and you'd need a couple. On the plus side though, there would be no monthly fees ...

Finally, I had a quick peek at the CHIP information. Although it's fully loaded with the communication bits needed it might be overkill for the sort of project we're talking about ... the cost is fantastic (low), but it appears to draw about 80mA when resting and 100mA when working (and I presume running linux that deep sleep modes aren't really available). Without big batteries or solar (wind?) power input it's going to be limited. In comparison, an Arduino Nano running unmodified draws about 4mA when resting and there are tricks that can be employed with a bareboard ATmega328 chip to drop this about 100-fold, effectively giving months of run time from a 3000mAh 3.7V battery. On the other hand (and this is a big plus in favour of the CHIP) the power management for battery charging is built into the board, so for the price of the CHIP plus a small solar panel you'd be set.

Very interested to know what you think.
Cheers