Hive monitoring - DIY

[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

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Colin
Great to have your help and expertise looking at this
Weather data and hive temperatures are all useful data
If we wanted to observe queens leaving and returning from mating that seems to be a bit trickier
The problem is knowing when she leaves and returns because she pretty much looks like any other bee and you can't put magnetic discs etc on her before she has mated
You could use say a UV reflective paint spot on her
Have you any thoughts on how the queen could be spotted leaving and returning to the hive

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[Colin]

Hi again folks

You're spot on that the C.H.I.P. is overkill. I've gone off and done some homework over the last day and a bit. I suggested it before I even really knew what an Arduino was.

I'll read up some more before I make any further suggestions. But....... at the moment I am puzzling over the problem of how you could connect up a number of hives to a single apiary controller which could send the data off to the cloud. How can this be done with very low power? Each hive monitor (say this is an Arduino + sensors + a radio link) probably wants to sit in sleep mode for most of its life, be simple and cheap so no solar panel + charging circuit, but last for many months. But I can't see a way that the apiary controller can run very low power. It needs to somehow be listening for the hive monitors and I have not yet found enough info on any of the radio options to see one which can sit in listening mode at very low current.

One question for you all. BLE (Bluetooth Low-Energy) seems to be limited to 10m "indoors, no walls". Does this make it impractical for use for an apiary network? Will any one hive be more than 10m away from an apiary controller? If so then some sort of mesh network might be needed which would probably run more power as more sites need to be in listening mode.

Anyway, I will keep on reading.....

Cheers
Colin

[gavin]

Me here :-)

Every apiary is different but for most UK apiaries the hives are spread over a distance shorter than 10m. If we are looking at the continental markets then 10m might be a bit limiting. UK apiaries are often 5, 10 even 20 hives on one site, some commercial wintering sites are larger and they tend to be larger anyway in warmer countries.

Things are a little more spread out at the Ochils site (and a mobile signal absent right where the hives sit), but then it is unusual in having lots of small boxes for queen mating. We have space for around 160 units currently. Not really feasible to monitor those despite the flights of fancy - although it would be interesting to gather some data on queen movements from them.

Solar panels: you can get 30W caravan solar panels for about £70, is that a useful amount of power?

Colin did get some lime honey in a jar (fairly pure stuff, yum!) but I forgot to take him the cut comb stuff. Next time maybe.

[fatshark]

I've been recommended to look at some of the Microchip offerings, many of which have very low power (nW) and can easily accomplish the sort of sensing required. They have bluetooth modules that would allow the short-range communication, again pretty low power (perhaps 15mA transmitting, but 1-5 uA when sleeping). Perhaps it would be possible to somehow synchronise communication so that the base station only listened for 5 minutes in the hour. When/after the sensor updated the base station their internal counters could be reset by the base station. That way the base station would only need to be 'on' for short periods and there would be little opportunity for drifting. A single solar powered unit - probably smaller than the one proposed by Gavin - might well be enough. However, I'm all at sea sifting through the Microchip range and suspect this is more up your street Colin ...

[The Drone Ranger]

If its just weather at the apiary you want data on then wouldn't this do the job ?
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/wireless-w...-station-n25fr

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[busybeephilip]

Hi All,

This is what you want to do, everything you can think of that can be done with a beehive, everything is supplied, schematics and C source codes for a PIC32 - what do you think ?

http://kurskelectronic.ru/lifesys/co...he-Beehive.pdf

And its web based just like the arnia system only appears to be better, take away the stuff that not needed and a PIC 18 would do the job, these chips only cost a couple of pounds dirt cheap!

[fatshark]

Good find busybeephilip ... was this ever actually implemented? The website mentioned doesn't exist and there's little on Google. If you go up one level on the Russian site there's a link to the project files - these are the C source code.

[busybeephilip]

Fatshark - He did not seem to win the 2009 competition http://www.microchip.com/forums/m414567.aspx

Lot of hard work has gone into it . If its the same guy https://plus.google.com/115172797767460676510/posts he is a very clever chap and has several patents on holography and electronic fingerprint technology during his career but nothing found patented on beekeeping

The website he mentioned that will follow the project is non-existant, could be he has given up or turning the whole thing into a commercial product. Might be worth contacting.



Location: Oceanside, Rockville Centre, Garden City, and Old Westbury
Beekeeper: Carl Flatow, Tanglewood Apiary
Products: Unheated, Unfiltered Honey
Website: www.tanglewoodhoney.com
Email: carl@tanglewoodhoney.com
Phone: (516) 510-6227

[The Drone Ranger]

Brilliant find busybeephillip
Lots of good info
I couldn't attempt anything remotely like that level of complexity
In fact I looked at his PCB and thought "there's no way I could even make that"
He used EEPROM storage not SD Card
The one he used I didn't find but this is a similar one for £1 or so from Farnell
http://uk.farnell.com/microchip/24lc...oij/dp/9758038
There is an Arduino library for the one he used though
http://playground.arduino.cc/Code/I2CEEPROM24LC512

Good info on the bee counter and I read but didn't understand the bit about tracking the queen in the hive by inductive sensors (have to Google that as well lol)

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