# General beekeeping > Everything and anything >  Hive monitoring - DIY

## fatshark

This is an attempt to corral discussion of DIY hive monitoring equipment - temperature, humidity, weight, noise _etc._ in a single thread. 

There are two recent relevant threads:
_Varroa estimations in winter_ - where Jon first mentioned Arnia monitors in post #9_Build the Buzz_ - which started with an 'advert' from the BBKA website and quickly developed into a discussion of home-brew technology to monitor hives. 
The most complete solution at the time of posting is the ear trumpet proposed by Gavin.

ear-trumpet-3.jpg
Oddly, neither can I.  But I can reinstate it.

Wow! Lucky I didn't post anything abusive by accident or I'd have been reprimanded  :Wink:

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## The Drone Ranger

Hi fatshark
I'll keep an eye on this thread now  :Smile: 
Still fiddling around with the AtTiny85 at the moment
If you are planning to get one of them then the Arduino IDE latest version  causes some issues so the previous version 1.6.5 (I think) is the one to download


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## fatshark

I've gone for a UNO clone for convenience. All seems OK so far. The DHT22 seems to generate sense and I'm scrabbling round trying to find an SD card for data storage. I've got a vague memory of chucking out some small capacity ones ... that'll teach me  :Wink: 

The intention is to create something that works (more of less) and then to port it to one of the micro clones lacking the USB, LEDs etc. or even a bare chip for power saving. I've not got all the necessary additional boards and stuff and now isn't the time to impatiently wait for things coming through the post.

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## fatshark

The DHT22 works fine and I can now read/write to an SD card and have some 433 MHz RF modules being delivered by Santa with the intention of having a hive-based low-power transmitter and a separate receiver.

In terms of practicality I'm not convinced that a combined temperature/humidity monitor is ideal (and am also wondering what sort of casing I can build to prevent the DHT22 becoming totally gummed up with propolis). I've therefore also ordered a few waterproof DS18B20 digital sensors. They look a whole lot more propolis-resistant:
$_12.JPG
These have unique addresses so can be wired in series if needed (loads of info here on getting addresses _etc_. Two libraries required and readily available). With 1m of wire on each it should be possible to get the broodnest temperature and the external temperature reasonably easily. I presume humidity can be measured in any suitable corner of the hive.

Next ... power, and how to use less of it.

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## The Drone Ranger

Hi fatshark 
I have a few of the ds18 sensors but haven't done anything with them yet
The DHT22 was a bit dear to have the bees destroy
DHT11 is much cheaper and pretty much good enough I think
The Digispark ATTiny 85 is what I have been messing around with at the moment
I got a little barometric sensor for a couple of pounds 
My brother in law is in hospital and Xmas taking up most of the energies at the moment but I have managed to do a little bit with timers etc
Well done getting the SDCard recording done 
MicroSD are cheap so it seems a good solution( for out apiaries anyway)

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## fatshark

Hi DR
I'm intending to protect the sensor by placing it in a 'tube' of insect mesh. I use this stuff for travel screens and have yards of it (somewhere!). It will allow good airflow and can be replaced if it gets caked in propolis. However, the DHT22 seems very slow to respond to changes in temperature.

My efforts to save energy currently (no pun intended) hampered by a) Christmas, b) work and c) losing my multimeter in the move up here. I have solutions for both (c) and (b). It's clear from stuff on the web that optimising battery life needs hardware (and the ATtiny85 will undoubtedly have the advantage here) and software changes _e.g._ barebones chip, low voltage and libraries that put everything to sleep between readings. Two years from 2xAA appears readily achievable, but the data storage/transmission will inevitably reduce this. I'm currently dabbling with the imaginative-named narcoleptic library  :Smile:

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## The Drone Ranger

Hi Fatshark
I mentioned this already but the Digispark AtTiny85 will moan a lot and not work properly with the latest Arduino IDE
The one to download is 1.6.5  https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/OldSo...eases#previous
 It will get fixed soon I expect 
I have bookmarked the links you gave me thanks a lot 
ps stumbled on this project it uses the Linkit One  :Smile: 
http://www.instructables.com/id/Prot...h-Tilt-Sensor/

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## fatshark

Hi DR ... my last contribution before locking myself away for a few days with a soldering iron, a few bottles of honey beer and a pile of stuff in anti-static envelopes. Oh yes, and a family Christmas ...  :Wink: 
All of the really low power Arduino-based systems use some sort of deep sleep functions - essentially shutting down until re-started by a watchdog timer. There's a neat description here of a system that wakes at 10 minute intervals and transmits a reading by 433MHz transmitter ... with an estimated 6 months runtime off a single 3.7V 1200mAh battery. This sounds like just the ticket for the sort of thing I have in mind. In addition to software trickery, it also uses a bare Atmega328 chip which reduces power to something around 0.005mAh (from 50mAh). It looks like the ATtiny85 can be at least as frugal. 
Second Arduino arrived this morning so I'll see if I can get them to talk to each other ... and to find out how far they can 'shout'.
It's been windy enough here over the last few weeks that a 'tilt sensor' might be very useful ... interesting.
Happy Christmas  :Smile:

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## The Drone Ranger

Both great links -- thanks Fatshark I have bookmarked them as well  :Smile: 
If you are looking for solar panels etc try http://www.banggood.com/search/solar-panel.html
I have bought quite a lot of components and stuff from them this year
They have been pretty good
When you pick something it will show as in the European Warehouse or Chinese one
The delivery is faster from Europe but the price is higher 
You can pay less on Ebay sometimes but theres not much in it
 you do get some points from Bangood and know who they are (to some extent)

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## fatshark

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  :Smile:

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## The Drone Ranger

> 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  :Smile: 
He has done some good work though sorting things out

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## fatshark

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  :Frown:  I've also received a couple of 433MHz RF thingies but the documentation is very limited ... perhaps unsurprising for a bit under £2

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## The Drone Ranger

Documentation whats that ?  :Smile: 
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

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## The Drone Ranger

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

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## fatshark

... 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  :Frown: 

* 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  :Cool:

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## gavin

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  :Smile: .

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## fatshark

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  :Wink: 
PPS Long time since I looked in a hive, but I'm pretty sure the pic isn's a queen  :Wink:

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## gavin

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 ....

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## fatshark

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  :Wink:

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## The Drone Ranger

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 

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## The Drone Ranger

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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## fatshark

Blimey ... I might regret mentioning queen mating  :Wink: 

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  :Wink:  ). 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  :Frown: 

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)

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## gavin

> ....  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.

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## fatshark

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 ...

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## 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  :Smile: 

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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

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## 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  :Smile: 

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

Thanks bruv'!




> I'd imagine a big slab of metal strapped to your back would be a bit of a passion-killer ...


Works for me!  :Wink:

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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 
> 
> 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.

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## 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  :Smile:  
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  :Wink:  ) 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

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## 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

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## 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  :Smile:  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.

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## 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 ...

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## 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!

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## 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.

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## 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

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## 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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## gavin

The Deluxe version would have the next stage whereby the LC resonance circuit thingie on the queen is adapted to permit electromagnet harvesting of mating queens  :Stick Out Tongue: .  Yup, you've spotted it, I'm out of my depth. 

But if you can stick a blob of paint on a virgin queen, they'll also take a thin circle of foil or something metallic and still get out to find the boys at the right time.

Yes, that weather station might do a basic job, DR, but my colleagues have their eyes on a professional-level system which means £££.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

Hi Gavin
I haven't marked virgin queens except by accident and i blamed that for one being bumped off and chucked out the front door by the bees in 2000 (blue marking)
I see that some people do though so it must be possible 
The reason I mentioned the UV paint is its invisible except under UV light 
UV LEDs are plentiful and so she would be easy to spot leaving a mininuc

Anyway turns out lots of birds can see things in UV light and bees themselves see patterns in flowers that are only visible in UV
Which means she might as well have a big red blue and white target on her back anyway

----------


## fatshark

> But if you can stick a blob of paint on a virgin queen, they'll also take a thin circle of foil or something metallic and still get out to find the boys at the right time.


If my first attempts with marking disks, a small tube of superglue and a queen are anything to go by she'd not be going anywhere ... unless she was strong enough to tow a poorly aerodynamic beekeeper stuck to her thorax with her  :Wink: 

I'm also out of my depth with the PIC chips and am rather hoping Colin is going to save us. I *do* have something that - to a fashion - works and hope to resolve power over the next month so that I have a functioning 'solution' (Ha! ... some chance) to stick into a hive as soon as practical. I suspect there are going to be a number of practical issues such as probe placement, wiring etc. that will still take some sorting out. I'm still hoping to negotiate power/wifi at one apiary but in the first instance am restricting myself to local recordings, rather than real-time data.

PS There's an interesting approach to sound recording in the hive here

----------


## Emma

Someone was asking about entrance monitors?
In 2014 I saw a device created by an Italian company. It was a big plastic entrance block, with 14 one-beeway entrance holes. It simply counted the number of bees that came out and the number that came back in, continuously. The guys demonstrating it gave several examples of why this was a useful parameter to monitor. One was the reduction in foraging intensity which is said to precede a swarm. Monitoring this from a distance might help predict swarming. (I can't remember the other examples offhand, & I'm a few hundred miles away from my notes!)
The company is still going but seems to have expanded beyond that initial focus to monitoring other parameters such as weight... http://melixa.eu/en  I'm hard pushed to understand much more, tho' the limits of Google translate are beginning to shed light on some of the documents I get from my Italian colleagues  :Big Grin:  
[This obscure snippet of info was brought to you courtesy of the StarTree research project! - star-tree.eu]

----------


## fatshark

A weatherproof/waterproof case for your microprocessor-based weather station/hive monitor/bee counter ... though I'd want to be using a more reasonably priced container, perhaps these from Tesco together with some cable gland connectors.

----------


## Colin

The weather-proofing link illustrates to me just how many different problems there are to solve here.  Phew.

I guess, as an engineering project, the first thing to be done would be to gather the "requirements".  That may be tricky as there are different people here with their own aims and these may at times conflict.  Bee counting or queen tracking would likely not be compatible with a low-cost, low-power system (one which could run off a "reasonable" size of battery for a "reasonable" length of time, and thus not need to support the cost of solar re-charging).

What would be great is if we could achieve some sort of modular design which supported everything from the lowest-end to the highest-end.  Lowest-end perhaps means environmental monitoring and storage to non-volatile memory and could be powered either from battery or from some fixed DC power source.  Highest-end would do the same but add (say) queen detection and video recording of queen entry/exit, uploading of this data to the cloud for remote monitoring, and a battery re-charging function.  Could the highest end system use all the software and electronics designed for the lowest-end and then just add the new functions on top?

Arduino seems to fit this model of design with all the "shields" that can be added on to the base board.  Is a PIC-based system also possible?

I spoke to a friend briefly yesterday, a chap who has designed numerous systems using PICs (he is a now-retired medical physicist).  He likes PICs because they get the designer closer to the micro-controller itself rather than hiding the details of the functions from the user.  While I can agree with him in some ways (it's always nice as an engineer to know exactly what is going on) I don't know that is the right way to look at it here, as the harder we make the task of writing software, the fewer people will get involved in making a contribution to writing and debugging code.

In addition, I have not found general-purpose PIC-based boards at prices like those that you can get Arduino boards for.  It looks like we could probably buy PICs from Farnell (or other) reasonably cheap and design a system with EEPROM+PIC but then we need to design a PCB too, and put the board together.  That sounds like a lot of work.  And creating this as a platform which was convenient for adding other modules on top of it sounds very hard to get right.  

So for the moment I would say that I would lean towards Arduino rather than PIC (or other micro-controller).

Anyway, I've just done a typical engineer thing there - tried to come up with a solution rather than agree the requirements first.  Tsk tsk.

What is the best way to gather requirements?  A stream of posts on a forum certainly isn't.  Maybe it's a Wiki.  Does vBulletin support Wiki pages?  I have a colleague who I shall see again on Monday and I can ask him about this, as well as some chat about Arduino developments (he's the guy with the temperature monitors in his house and shed).

And happy new year everyone!

Cheers
Colin

----------


## gavin

> Anyway, I've just done a typical engineer thing there - tried to come up  with a solution rather than agree the requirements first.  Tsk tsk.
> 
> What is the best way to gather requirements?  A stream of posts on a  forum certainly isn't.  Maybe it's a Wiki.  Does vBulletin support Wiki  pages?  I have a colleague who I shall see again on Monday and I can ask  him about this, as well as some chat about Arduino developments (he's  the guy with the temperature monitors in his house and shed).


Interesting thought.  Yes, there are vBulletin add-ins that any competent Administrator ought to be able to install .....  :Wink: 

Could take some time on my part.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

Thanks for your thoughts on that Colin 
I think you are right about Arduino because anyone can get involved then 
Perhaps a simple Poll on what people are most interested in monitoring might be a place to start Gavin ?
Then perhaps think about what we would learn by monitoring Vs the difficulty of achieving that 
(I'm not that keen on weather monitoring because I can already tell what its like looking out the window  :Smile:  )
Udemy have some courses on sale at the moment is anyone is interested
https://www.udemy.com/courses/search...rc=sac&lang=en

----------


## fatshark

I'd like a detector for mice. Little b'stards. Just discovered a nuc destroyed by a couple of them this morning  :Frown:   That's the first colony I've ever lost to rodents overwinter ... and all through my own stupidity as I'd omitted (forgotten or chose not to?) to put a mouseguard in place across the cavernous entrance of one of the poly Everynucs. Idiot.

As an aside ... I treated this nuc with vaporised OA on the 9th of December. Since I don't open colonies to treat them I've no evidence that the mice were in residence. If they *weren't* they've caused very widespread devastation in just 3 weeks. If they *were* then they exhibited no ill effects from inhaling the vapour and scuttled off with no signs of wheezing.

----------


## fatshark

And in response to DR ...

I'm after 3-4 temperature readings.
Brood, hive, ambient, external (I have colonies in a bee shed so ambient and external may not be the same)
Hive humidity
Sound in the 180-275Hz range.

My interests are a) how much my bee shed helps 'protect' colonies and, indirectly, whether the brood rearing period is longer 'indoors', and b) how a variety of "treatments" (primarily _vs.Varroa_) disturb the colony. For example, can you determine whether the queen has stopped laying in response to Apiguard treatment? How quickly do a colony treated with vaporised OA settle?

I've chosen the Arduino route 'cos I more or less understand what I'm doing, whereas I'm all at sea when I've looked through the PIC18/32 documentation. The advantages are laid out by Colin. The disadvantages are their power demands and - at least for some of the hardware - the cost. 

I'm happy I can measure temperature and humidity. I've got a microphone and some of the necessary bits for solar power on order. However, for a low power Arduino you almost certainly need to build your own ... this also allows you to change the voltage regulator for a more efficient one or omit it altogether and use a couple of AA cells.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

I was interested in monitoring queen mating flights

I thought video but I think Colin is concerned about how much energy and storage that would need
Maybe just knowing she has left and come back with time of departure,flight time, return to mininuc is enough

I say mininuc because I think that is simpler than with full size hives (one small entrance less bees etc)

Hopefully that would give some useful info on differences in bee race
The queens with least and most mating might be followed up to see how they perform
If that can be correlated with weather conditions and temperature some interesting results might appear


Fatshark have you tried out a digispark AtTiny85 they are very small and straightforward to use
That has an onboard 5V voltage regulator and USB  (handy) but if you dont want that then
The AtTiny85 chip can be programmed from your Arduino Uno fairly straightforwardly

----------


## The Drone Ranger

> I'd like a detector for mice. Little b'stards. Just discovered a nuc destroyed by a couple of them this morning .


A mouse blowpipe which tracks the munching sounds and then  fires an air gun dart at high velocity propelled by gas from CO2 bike repair kit 
Sounds simple I'll get right on it  :Smile: 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/watch/hack...d-danger-mouse

Because it hasn't been so cold as normal this year I'm surprised the bees didn't break the cluster and sting the $#!^ out of them

----------


## fatshark

> Fatshark have you tried out a digispark AtTiny85


Not yet ... it's on my list of things to do (it's a long list  :Wink:  ). I did receive a small packet of goodies this morning to build my own Arduino. With a replacement voltage regulator and a bit of tweaking it's reported you can get down to low microamps when sleeping which, since it's most of the time, is a huge improvement on the 15-20mA the board usually draws. 

I have got an Arduino Nano which, when awake, but running at a lower voltage (3.3V rather than 5V) takes something like 4-5mA - this is probably ATtiny86 territory.

Cheers

----------


## The Drone Ranger

Hi Fatshark 
in the first project you posted a link to ages ago you might remember the chap was extracting every last bit of energy from the battery (If you start with 3 AA`cells its not long till the voltage will drop for example)
This type of thing should let you extract every bit of energy from the batteries before they have to be replaced 
Not absolutely confident in that, but its worth a look

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181957104209

----------


## Colin

> Not yet ... it's on my list of things to do (it's a long list  ). I did receive a small packet of goodies this morning to build my own Arduino. With a replacement voltage regulator and a bit of tweaking it's reported you can get down to low microamps when sleeping which, since it's most of the time, is a huge improvement on the 15-20mA the board usually draws. 
> 
> I have got an Arduino Nano which, when awake, but running at a lower voltage (3.3V rather than 5V) takes something like 4-5mA - this is probably ATtiny86 territory.
> 
> Cheers


Interesting - are you building from a design provided for you, or from your own design?

I'm sure you've seen these low power efforts before:
http://www.digitalsmarties.net/products/jeenode
http://www.instructables.com/id/Ardu...ject-and-code/




> Hi Fatshark 
> in the first project you posted a link to ages ago you might remember the chap was extracting every last bit of energy from the battery (If you start with 3 AA`cells its not long till the voltage will drop for example)
> This type of thing should let you extract every bit of energy from the batteries before they have to be replaced 
> Not absolutely confident in that, but its worth a look
> 
> http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181957104209


This is useful if you have a battery source which is always lower than the required output voltage.  For instance with 0.9V minimum input voltage this looks ideal for use with a single NiMh cell, so you can convert up to 5V out of a single "1.5V" battery.

Using the boost to extract the charge out of the battery when the input has dropped below the "knee" in the discharge curve is not recommended.  There's very little energy left in the battery at that point and you really need to design the system to "give up" at a battery voltage above that and go into a micro-power state to stop discharging the battery so far that it cannot be recovered.

Colin

----------


## fatshark

Baseboard Arduino details are here: https://www.arduino.cc/en/main/standalone
A great guide to low power is here: http://www.gammon.com.au/power

I should add that I've not had time to actually *do* anything with these yet ...

----------


## 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
> Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk


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.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

> I'm sure you've seen these low power efforts before:
> http://www.digitalsmarties.net/products/jeenode
> http://www.instructables.com/id/Ardu...ject-and-code/
> 
> 'Fraid not Colin , I have now though 
> Thanks
> 
> 
> 
> ...


If it was 2 or 3 standard dry cell batteries Colin could you just carry on till close to the 0.9V min ?
Or would that be a bad idea ?
_(I'm off to Aldi to empty their battery recycling box _  )

----------


## 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  :Smile: 
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  :Smile:

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## The Drone Ranger

I tried to go from Forfar to Blaigowrie today 
3 Different routes all closed by flooding 
Gave up in the end

Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

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## Colin

> If it was 2 or 3 standard dry cell batteries Colin could you just carry on till close to the 0.9V min ?
> Or would that be a bad idea ?
> _(I'm off to Aldi to empty their battery recycling box _  )


AA-NiMH-composite.png

Take these curves as an example.  At the lowest current load level (200mA - which is in fact much higher than any Arduino system) you can see that once the voltage drops to 1.1V there is almost no charge left in the battery.  There's no point in running he system any further as it won't last very long, and if you do keep draining the battery, it will reach a deeply discharged state, and some battery charging systems will not try to re-charge a battery from this state.

It's actually quite difficult to design a system which can pull most of the charge out of the battery without putting it into a deep discharge state.  You really need to use the a voltage level to make the decision to turn off the system.  But if you get this wrong by a small amount either way, you will either leave a lot of charge in the battery, or you will go to deep discharge.

It's probably best to look at the battery voltage when you have the biggest current load running - let's say, when you have the radio on.  Comparing this voltage to the voltage when at light load might be a good measure for making the "turn off" decision.

I can look into this further later to see what the standard techniques for Arduino systems are.

Of course, since we will be running at a very low current, maybe we could wait until we reach about 0.9V (*).  Then we really know that the battery is about to die (pretty suddenly).

(*) I mean 0.9V per cell if these cells are in series, so 1.8V for 2 cells, 2.7V for 3 etc etc

Cheers
Colin

----------


## alclosier

Instead of attaching something to the queen would it be easier measure another element linked to a matting flight? Maybe a sudden increase in bees exiting the hive in the right time/external temp range? It might need some tweeking to find the right combination but would avoid you having to mark the queen.

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

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## The Drone Ranger

> Instead of attaching something to the queen would it be easier measure another element linked to a matting flight? Maybe a sudden increase in bees exiting the hive in the right time/external temp range? It might need some tweeking to find the right combination but would avoid you having to mark the queen.
> 
> Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk


Definitely noisier alclosier I wondered about triggering monitoring with a microphone on the keiler lid
Rather than monitoring all the time 
It would be nice to know she was out mating though because she will have a few very short flights beforehand getting prepped for the big day

Thanks for the battery info Colin 

Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

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## gavin

I'm not convinced by the idea of monitoring noise to estimate queen activity.  After a rainy period when the sun comes out there can often be a big fuss around the entrance of some hives when the young ones graduate onto flying duties and are exploring the vicinity.  Queens might go at the same time but usually it is just workers reaching the time to go foraging.

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## greengumbo

> Definitely noisier alclosier I wondered about triggering monitoring with a microphone on the keiler lid
> Rather than monitoring all the time 
> It would be nice to know she was out mating though because she will have a few very short flights beforehand getting prepped for the big day
> 
> Thanks for the battery info Colin 
> 
> Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk


Speaking of rain....would that not trigger the microphone as well at erroneous times ?

I have marked virgin queens before and had them fly and return etc. Mainly from when I underestimated the hatching day when cells are in incubators and so ran them into mating nucs rather than put ripe cells in. Would be far harder if they had emerged in situ and would not be confident of finding them to mark at day 1 or 2 !

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## The Drone Ranger

> I'm not convinced by the idea of monitoring noise to estimate queen activity.  After a rainy period when the sun comes out there can often be a big fuss around the entrance of some hives when the young ones graduate onto flying duties and are exploring the vicinity.  Queens might go at the same time but usually it is just workers reaching the time to go foraging.


Good point Gavin and also greengumbo 
You guys are probably right its a dead duck
Its good to know you can get away with marking the virgin GG

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## Colin

Well, I too now have some hardware on the way.....

Using all those interesting links on low power builds, I hope that an Arduino Pro Mini board can have the standard regulator removed and replaced with a MCP1700-300 regulator.  The replacement is not in the same package but I think that with some careful soldering it'll all work out quite neatly.

So I've ordered a few of those boards (they're only £2 each) plus some MCP1700 regulators.  Plus one board to connect these through USB for re-programming.  And some Bluetooth HC-10 boards (same price).  And some Li-Ion battery holder and batteries.  And some DHT11 temp/humidity sensors.  All will come from ebay apart from the regulators, from Farnell.  I'm amazed at how cheap it all is.  A  setup with Arduino Pro Mini (modified for super-low sleep current of <10uA) + bluetooth HC-10 + 2xDHT11 + 9800mAh Li-Ion 18650 battery in a battery holder could be put together for about £7 I think.

Some of this stuff will wing its way slowly from China so it could be a while before all the kit is here.  Fun ahead!

Colin

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## The Drone Ranger

Lol !
You have been busy Colin 

Sometimes its worth checking these guys 
http://www.jprelec.co.uk/store.asp/c...-Coated-Boards
http://www.jprelec.co.uk/store.asp/c...loride-Etchant
http://www.jprelec.co.uk/store.asp/c...loper-Solution
There is a minimum of £30 for free delivery

This is bit dear but pretty safe way to etch a board
http://www.rapidonline.com/tools-equ...wdkaaht58p8haq

Hopefully making PCB's can be avoided because it can be a real pain

If not then http://fritzing.org/home/ cheap and cheerful (free)

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## Colin

The postman has started bringing my goodies already :-)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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## alclosier

> Speaking of rain....would that not trigger the microphone as well at erroneous times ?


Is it not possible to measure the freq and type of noise? Rain sounds different to bees.

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

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## gavin

> The postman has started bringing my goodies already :-)
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Shall I bring you a hive at the weekend?   :Wink:

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## The Drone Ranger

> Is it not possible to measure the freq and type of noise? Rain sounds different to bees.
> 
> Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk


Good thought alclosier some expensive systems do say they can differentiate
You also have a fair idea of when to monitor for mating
After noon /in good light /warm/ low wind/ etc
If its mini nucs you also know the start date within a range
You can make assumptions about when to stop monitoring
You still need to spot her leaving/returning somehow 
Any ideas ?   :Smile:

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## busybeephilip

Marking the queen with a small magnetic disc or paint impregnated with iron filings in conjunction with flight entrances containing a metal detector - it should work provided queen is not affected by magnetism

ordered a couple of those DHT11 to play with, it seems that the temp and humidity signal uses the same output but spaced apart which might make programming a bit more of a painful task.

Damm - just realized that DHT11 is a 5v device and my chip pic18F45k20 is 3.3v  - should work with 3.3v supply

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## alclosier

Rather than spotting when she leaves what other characteristics are there to indicate a mating flight?
I'm not an expert but I think measuring a larger volume of bees leaving than normal, then returning at the same time might be an option. The best option might be to create a test package to collect the data on various data sources before making the decision on method. 

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

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## The Drone Ranger

> Marking the queen with a small magnetic disc or paint impregnated with iron filings in conjunction with flight entrances containing a metal detector - it should work provided queen is not affected by magnetism
> 
> ordered a couple of those DHT11 to play with, it seems that the temp and humidity signal uses the same output but spaced apart which might make programming a bit more of a painful task.
> 
> Damm - just realized that DHT11 is a 5v device and my chip pic18F45k20 is 3.3v  - should work with 3.3v supply


Hi Phil
I checked the datasheet and the min V for the DHT11 is 3V so your still in with a shout
Possible that someone will have something online code wise

----------


## fatshark

DHT11 ... You should be able to extract and butcher the code from the libraries that have been written to handle this sort of thing - perhaps here http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/DHTLib - not sure what you're coding for.

As an aside, for anyone wanting *multiple* temperature sensing it's a whole lot easier - hardware and software - to use DS18B20's which use the OneWire protocol, so you can link multiple sensors up in serial. There are also _el cheapo_ versions of the sensor in beeproof and waterproof packaging _e.g._ http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/381291985482. These are very straightforward to use.

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## The Drone Ranger

http://www.libstock.com/projects/vie...icrocontroller

Haven't read this article  Phil and I know nothing about assembly language or C so can only suggest that it shows it can be done 
You probably know that already 
The one you have looks good on the power consumption front
There is a pic chip range Pickaxe with its own interpreted language a bit like BBC basic (lots of goto's etc) more suited to the likes of me 

Alclosier you are right again a few experiments with dummy queens etc might help 
Where is Brian May when you need him  :Smile:

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## alclosier

You're not looking for drones  :Wink: 

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

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## The Drone Ranger

> You're not looking for drones 
> 
> Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk


You gave me an idea there though 
How about a a balloon on a long thin string 
Hanging below it a little microphone sending via bluetooth when it hears something
Down on the ground in your pocket a receiver
The receiver decides if the sound matches that of drones
If it does it records your position GPS 
It sends a signal to the microphone "keep listening DCA !!"  
If not it sends signal to microphone "go back to sleep its geese" 

We'll call it the alclosier DCA detection system  :Smile:  
In later generations they won't shout "Eureka! " when the find a DCA they'll shout "alclosier..."

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## alclosier

Lol if you're looking for dca's you would have to use a drone rather than a balloon. Mainly cos the drone would be looking for drones....

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

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## The Drone Ranger

[QUOTE=alclosier;33914]Lol if you're looking for dca's you would have to use a drone rather than a balloon. Mainly cos the drone would be looking for drones....

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk[/QUOTE

Drone like the Parrot ?
Lol! too dear for me 
http://shop.epictv.com/en/drones/beb...mDUaAs9Y8P8HAQ

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## fatshark

How about this spec.?

Temperature and humidity sensing. At intervals of 1s to 24 hours. Up to 21000 data points _i.e._ >1 year at 30 minute sampling. 2 x AAA batteries. USB connection for downloading data. £23

Available from Amazon

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## The Drone Ranger

Amazing technology for the price fatshark
http://highlowtech.org/?p=1695
Re -  ATtiny85 
This has been very useful page because its mostly all in one place  :Smile:

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## The Drone Ranger

Hopefully this will give anyone interested the means to make their own box
You will need to have downloaded Fritzing http://fritzing.org/home/
And the Arduino IDE https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/OldSo...eases#previous
V1.6.5 is best as the latest release has some bugs associated with Attiny85 (might be fixed now)

This link give all the files for Fritzing and Arduino plus PDF's of the boards for printing and  BOM
https://drive.google.com/folderview?...lk&usp=sharing
Use this page for programming your attiny85 chip
http://highlowtech.org/?p=1695

DSCF2041.jpgDSCF2038.jpg
DSCF2023.jpg

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## The Drone Ranger

I've just woken up and realised I haven't a clue what is going on with the hive monitoring
Has anybody started/finished any section of the thing ?

I haven't meant to spend so much time on the varrox timer 
It has been a good training ground though 
I have fried several regulators and transistors and done for 3 or 4  AtTiny chips and a couple of Digispark ones
China's economy is looking up again after a flurry of replacements and new bits got ordered

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## Greengage

Im curious to know where everybody got with the project,
Have you agreed that temp and humidity of Brood, hive , are important and external temps as well this will indicate if hive needs ventilation, if queen has ceased laying i.e no brood so treatment can be given.
Sound will indicate if swarming is eminent?? (Maybe its just raining)

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## fatshark

I think I posted earlier the approx. stage I'd got to ... I can get the temp and humidity readings I want, can store them to SD card and can get reasonable battery performance. I've got a real time clock working so can relate in-hive events to things I do externally (or that happen in the environment). I've recently received a 'thingy' to allow me to run from a batter/solar panel combination, but still have to buy the panel. Almost all of this is on an Arduino or one of it's smaller, lower voltage relatives. I've not actually trashed anything yet ... perhaps I'm not trying hard enough.

I've bought a barebones Arduino chipset and will build a ultra-low power version if I don't get enough oomph from the solar.

I've yet to get beyond the breadboard stage and will probably try the Mark I version like this. I'm fortunate I have a shed so weather protection isn't an issue. I've still got to work out how to keep the probes in the parts of the hive I want them to be - the wires (of which there are several) are ~4-5mm in diameter. Mark II will probably have to wait until next winter ... I can feel the urge to build stuff with bits of wood growing and want to construct a couple of modified Snelgrove/Morris/Horsley boards to experiment with this season.

Sound is a problem and I've not solved it ... I'm going to cheat. I want sound monitoring for relatively short periods and want to be able to detect changes in frequency. I'm going to try doing this with a microphone/dictaphone setup and post-process. No idea whether it'll work. I'm even wondering whether I can simply use a directional mike under the OMF. 

I then got distracted with relays and started building a slave clock driver ...  :Wink:

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## The Drone Ranger

> Almost all of this is on an Arduino or one of it's smaller, lower voltage relatives. I've not actually trashed anything yet ... perhaps I'm not trying hard enough.
> I then got distracted with relays and started building a slave clock driver ...


The ATtiny85's got binned after I found that the internal clock speeds up if you increase its supply voltage 
I thought that might make a simple way of shortening or lengthening the timing dependant on battery condition  :Smile: 

Veroboard is a good intermediate stage fatshark

Were you thinking of fitting the sensors in the crown board or drilling through the broodbox wall
I wonder if the sensor could be fitted in the brood frame and a connection made with a press stud
You see this method in kids electronics kits and it works pretty well

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## fatshark

Hi DR
I've been toying with two solutions to sensor placement. The first is to cut a small notch out of the top of the hive body and run the cables in from there ... the advantage here is that I should be able to remove the crownboard and rummage about with disturbing everything. The alternative I was considering was a sheet of Correx (what else) with holes or flaps at particular positions I might be interested in placing probes. These could be lowered down and then held in place on top of the Correx with the inevitable strip of gaffer or duct tape. By marking the cable with a pen or strip of tape I can lower it vertically to the centre of the brood nest.

I'm concerned that solution 1 might have the cables dropping out of place unless they're attached to the top bars. I currently favour the Correx sheet. 

I've generally found that if it's a choice between something else and Correx then the correct answer is Correx. This conclusion is influenced by having acres of the stuff. I'm going to build a Snelgrove-type board out of it shortly. I already use it for bait hive floors, roofs and landing boards. I stupidly bought black, rather than a mixed pack. I'd like a sheet of white to make some more Varroa boards.

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## The Drone Ranger

> Im curious to know where everybody got with the project,
> Have you agreed that temp and humidity of Brood, hive , are important and external temps as well this will indicate if hive needs ventilation, if queen has ceased laying i.e no brood so treatment can be given.
> Sound will indicate if swarming is eminent?? (Maybe its just raining)


Hi GG
I'm pretty sure taking the measurements in several places for temperature and probably just one for humidity should be fairly easy
I always say something like that and end up regretting it  :Smile: 

I'm not really sure though what to do with the data and what it might reveal

Before working out how to get the readings sent back to my iPhone there are a couple of things I would need 
1) a reason for doing it 
2) An iPhone  :Smile: 

Seriously though nobody wants the hive looking like a rolled up set of Christmas lights
So thats the first problem to address before anything else, it has to be workable
Fatshark is doing the prototyping at the moment so that should provide proof of concept 

There was some attempts in the past to predict swarming by monitoring noise I think that might have been the Apidictor or something 
Don't think it caught on most people seem to prefer climbing up a ladder with a box  :Smile: 

Did you have some thoughts on any of that 
 John

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## The Drone Ranger

http://www.simblee.com/Simblee%20Use...de%20v2.05.pdf

I think this could be a useful way forward 
Its small low power and simplifies some of the problems by having software for interfacing with the phone etc
programming it is pretty similar to Arduino
Don't know if the android app is available yet for smart phone or tablet
The Simblee looks good though
One downside is you probably need to buy the USB shield because although you can use Arduino as an IDE for programming 5V logic level chips this one uses a 3.3V logic Level and that means either a lot of fiddling or a converter board from Sparkfun or somebody
In the end the USB board with built in voltage converter is easier
Price wise about £30 from Radiospares and another £20 or so for the USB shield 
But it could save a lot of hassle potentially  :Smile:

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## The Drone Ranger

> Hopefully this will give anyone interested the means to make their own box
> You will need to have downloaded Fritzing http://fritzing.org/home/
> And the Arduino IDE https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/OldSo...eases#previous
> V1.6.5 is best as the latest release has some bugs associated with Attiny85 (might be fixed now)
> 
> This link give all the files for Fritzing and Arduino plus PDF's of the boards for printing and  BOM
> https://drive.google.com/folderview?...lk&usp=sharing
> Use this page for programming your attiny85 chip
> http://highlowtech.org/?p=1695
> ...


I posted this earlier in the thread but if anyone doesn't want to tackle the build then I have a couple ready to use on Ebay listing 252286145677 under beekeeping or just search Varrox timer or something
Cheaper than buying all the parts £20
They take a long time to make (when I do them anyway)  :Smile:

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## mbc

Looks very professional DR, well done!

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## The Drone Ranger

Thanks mbc 
I should have helped a bit on the hive monitoring front
fatshark has the whole thing underway 
I keep getting side tracked 
You should make a few of your mini Sublimox kits

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## mbc

> You should make a few of your mini Sublimox kits


And be somewhat responsible when someone gets a lungful of oxalic vapour? no thanks. If anyone wants to build their own, its not rocket science nor secret, I'm a big believer in open source information and if anyone wants to know where to get the bits and how to put them together I'd be happy to help.

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## The Drone Ranger

Suppose that might be a problem, but your still around so it can't be that dodgy lol!

Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

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## Greengage

heard a heater from diesel ignition works well

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## mbc

> heard a heater from diesel ignition works well


Apparently they do, and are probably the best home fix method of 12v heating for those with a few hives.
I've gone for a ptc crucible so I can leave it plugged in as I go round the apiary, if it does what it says on the tin it stops drawing current when it reaches ~ 230c, which is a not bad temp for oav. 
Its certainly not a design I want to sell on as using it involves spooning oxalic acid crystals onto a hot plate before the device blows clouds of acid vapour into the hives, as you can probably imagine this is a bit hazardous for the operator if they haven't got their ppe sorted.  
Sorry for the thread diversion.

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## busybeephilip

This little heater is winging its way to me as I type  sublimox heater.jpg

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## The Drone Ranger

Hi bbp is that a 240V bit off a sublimox ?
how does it work ?
what plans have you for using it ?
I thought the Orient was the land of mystery not NI  :Smile:

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## busybeephilip

Yep, your right ! Available in the UK from RS.   It heats to a max of some 340C but I'm planning to use a K type thermocouple to control and set the heat, don't know how hot a real sublimox gets to but trial and error will sort it out.   I've got a stainless steel container and just trying to source a block of heat resistant plastic for the O ring lid.

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## Greengage

Back to the hive monitoring,Looks like some students are going to make one for me, Their task to identify some key variables that influennce the health of a beehive and develop  a system to measure  these variables over time,  the seperate variables should be combined into a holistic model that indicates the health of the hive and the likley yield of honey for the season this information ashould be available over the internet  viewed from a remote beehive.
So Ive asked them for something that measures temperature outside and inside the hive, this will indicate if they are clustering if temp it below 13deg C, if their is no brood present so good time for oxalic acid treatment, below 8deg bees will be dropping off outside cluster and dying, weight of hive to indicate stores and spring build up.Tilt switch to indicate if hive has fallen over due to poor weather of something moree sinister.

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## The Drone Ranger

> Back to the hive monitoring,Looks like some students are going to make one for me, Their task to identify some key variables that influennce the health of a beehive and develop  a system to measure  these variables over time,  the seperate variables should be combined into a holistic model that indicates the health of the hive and the likley yield of honey for the season this information ashould be available over the internet  viewed from a remote beehive.
> So Ive asked them for something that measures temperature outside and inside the hive, this will indicate if they are clustering if temp it below 13deg C, if their is no brood present so good time for oxalic acid treatment, below 8deg bees will be dropping off outside cluster and dying, weight of hive to indicate stores and spring build up.Tilt switch to indicate if hive has fallen over due to poor weather of something moree sinister.


Top man GG
I can get back to my cat detector in the meanwhile  :Smile:

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## The Drone Ranger

> Yep, your right ! Available in the UK from RS.   It heats to a max of some 340C but I'm planning to use a K type thermocouple to control and set the heat, don't know how hot a real sublimox gets to but trial and error will sort it out.   I've got a stainless steel container and just trying to source a block of heat resistant plastic for the O ring lid.


Good luck with that project the bbp
170C might be a good starting point
There might be a way to use the units own resistance to give you rough temperature control
Hall effect current sensor ?
Just guessing haven't tried it
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-...Effect-Sensor/

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## The Drone Ranger

> Hi DR
> I've been toying with two solutions to sensor placement. The first is to cut a small notch out of the top of the hive body and run the cables in from there ... the advantage here is that I should be able to remove the crownboard and rummage about with disturbing everything. The alternative I was considering was a sheet of Correx (what else) with holes or flaps at particular positions I might be interested in placing probes. These could be lowered down and then held in place on top of the Correx with the inevitable strip of gaffer or duct tape. By marking the cable with a pen or strip of tape I can lower it vertically to the centre of the brood nest.
> 
> I'm concerned that solution 1 might have the cables dropping out of place unless they're attached to the top bars. I currently favour the Correx sheet. 
> 
> I've generally found that if it's a choice between something else and Correx then the correct answer is Correx. This conclusion is influenced by having acres of the stuff. I'm going to build a Snelgrove-type board out of it shortly. I already use it for bait hive floors, roofs and landing boards. I stupidly bought black, rather than a mixed pack. I'd like a sheet of white to make some more Varroa boards.


Could it be done with contactless infrared sensors?
 I was looking at those and how you can make a small metal shield that narrows the field of measurement
I was thinking mount them in line with the bee space on the underside of crownboard then the whole thing lifts off in one go
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1296

I don't know if you had a minute to check out the Simblee thats a bluetooth device that I think has possibilities
But at the moment there is only a communication app for iPhone and its 3.3vlogic and a bit dear

Apart from that though its perfect BLE is low energy just a few milliamps when on
Chip programmed via the Arduino IDE and sending data to smartphone up to about 10m
The app can see 8 Simblee's at a time so a quick walk through the apiary gathers all the info needed
Works with Correx of all types  :Smile:

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## The Drone Ranger

Spent a couple of days fiddling with temperature sensors ,wifi and an android phone
So far so good I can read the temperature on  4 sensors and send the data to an android phone
Long way to go but a bit encouraging

Must get gwizzie's advice on video he can track a single bee across a heather moor   :Smile: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCub...EzHuE8daEqdR45

If you look hard you can see the screen is scrolling the values of the 4 sensors one after another in both Fahrenheit and Celsius  meanwhile the phone gets sent the temperature of the current one in Celsius

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## The Drone Ranger

Beating_A_Dead_Horse.GIF

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## fatshark

> If you look hard you can see the screen is scrolling the values of the 4 sensors one after another in both Fahrenheit and Celsius  meanwhile the phone gets sent the temperature of the current one in Celsius


And if you listen carefully you can hear "Take it Easy" by the Eagles.

Lookin' good  :Wink:

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## The Drone Ranger

DSCF2139.jpg

Thats 10 temperature sensors(one for each space between frames)
2 graphs with 4 on each (5 wont fit) over period of about a day
Next step humidity and tilt hopefully
The big number on right is millis and shows it has been about 9.5 hours since last reboot
The data is uploaded from my wifi network(for now) and its accessible via mobile phone anywhere via an android app

Power consumption is high lots of issues to address but its a start
Hope to have more done by next week

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## fatshark

Good job ... I was thinking about this today when reading the "use of nucs" article in the BBKA magazine. The instructions are to move a small colony into a nuc to encourage it to draw more comb 'because it's warmer'. I wonder whether anyone has actually ever measured the between frame temperature difference in a nuc _vs_ a full sized brood box containing a similar sized colony. I'd strongly suspect that, when not covered in bees, the temperature wasn't hugely different.

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## The Drone Ranger

> Good job ... I was thinking about this today when reading the "use of nucs" article in the BBKA magazine. The instructions are to move a small colony into a nuc to encourage it to draw more comb 'because it's warmer'. I wonder whether anyone has actually ever measured the between frame temperature difference in a nuc _vs_ a full sized brood box containing a similar sized colony. I'd strongly suspect that, when not covered in bees, the temperature wasn't hugely different.


A good thing to do as a project 
Might get some interesting results from that

Proto crownboard 
DSCF2143.jpg

I think sensors could be mounted on slides to fit in with frame spacing
this is just for testing
I'm not sure measuring at the top will work because of circulation all the air up there might be about the same temp

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## The Drone Ranger

Humidity added now
Waiting for tilt sensor
but
Haven't done any power saving and the code is messy

Hope if I can I get to the testing on a hive stage somebody can step in and fix all that  :Smile: 
Does anybody know how to use github ?
Sent from my S208 using Tapatalk

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## gwizzie

> Humidity added now
> Waiting for tilt sensor
> but
> Haven't done any power saving and the code is messy
> 
> Hope if I can I get to the testing on a hive stage somebody can step in and fix all that 
> Does anybody know how to use github ?
> Sent from my S208 using Tapatalk


Hope this help you bud ? https://guides.github.com/activities/hello-world/

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## The Drone Ranger

Thanks Graham 
That's very helpful

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## Emma

> Good job ... I was thinking about this today when reading the "use of nucs" article in the BBKA magazine. The instructions are to move a small colony into a nuc to encourage it to draw more comb 'because it's warmer'. I wonder whether anyone has actually ever measured the between frame temperature difference in a nuc _vs_ a full sized brood box containing a similar sized colony. I'd strongly suspect that, when not covered in bees, the temperature wasn't hugely different.


I came across this comment during my first year, it influenced my thinking & my practice quite a lot:
http://www.beesource.com/forums/arch.../t-252193.html 
"When I was in school in Ohio, my Professor put heat sensors in a beehive. They were placed in the cluster, beside the cluster, in otherwords laterally between the cluster and the outside wall, above the cluster and outside of the hive and a number of sensors in an apple tree, it being apple blossom time.
The temp in the cluster was 98 degrees. At the edge of the cluster it was approximately 45 to 50 degrees. Above the cluster it wasn't 98, but it was much warmer than beside the cluster. (I wish my memory were better as to the data.)
The temp between the cluster and the sidewall, away from the cluster, was the same as the temperature outside of the hive.
That is what I have seen and experienced."

I'll be fascinated to hear what results you get, DR. If you have problems with github I probably know someone who could help.
Still just want my own bees wired for sound.

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## The Drone Ranger

Thanks Emma
I just want to be able to put the hacked up code on Github so people can get at it and use / fix / improve it 

I don't think you will get much in the way of results from my efforts ?
I will be happy once I have crown board that can slot on where the frame spacing varies to fit
I looked at tilt sensors (hive fell over) but I think an accelerometer has some advantages so working on that now

The Android software is Blynk
The board is a WeMos D1

I haven't explored sound yet  :Smile: 

This wont suit everyone because it's using wireless internet connection
I'll be trying the mobile route on 3 network but some people might be in range of their own or a BT Fon etc

I have some ideas for a bluetooth alternative

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## Emma

Way over my head, DR  :Smile:   My only ambition for this winter is that I might, for the first time ever, be able to catch up with basic equipment-fettling in time for the season. Hoping to get a chance to do more fancy stuff next winter: I'll catch up with understanding some of this thread then.
Might be able to get wifi at my apiary, with a bit of work. Phone signal there is rubbish.

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## The Drone Ranger

OK Emma 
Now I can tell if the hive is upright ,moving, leaning, or fallen over
The idea being because all the data gets sent up to the Blynk server you can log in with the Blynk App and get real time data on what's going on at the hive from anywhere
Should be able to put some details and code up soon 
The list of materials isnt huge 

About £50 worth all up

A portable WiFi hub Huawei costs £20 comes with 1 Gb data sim  (I haven't tested that method yet) That would need its own portable power brick as well 
Not sure if it's a viable option or not



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## The Drone Ranger

I don't want to slog through documenting the whole thing unnecessarily
So if anyone wants details of how to do it then let me know

On your phone you can monitor your hives from anywhere but you need a wifi signal in the apiary
hive_monitor.jpg
There are 10 temperature sensors in first 2 and a half rows
Then a single symbol which reports  hive upright ,leaning, moving or fallen down
Bottom row far right is humidity

Lower half of screen has  2 graphs of readings from 8 of the sensors over a period
This photo shows history data for a month (since I started it)
You can choose 1hr/6hr/1day/iweek/month or 3 month and it will change to that view instantly
I don't think I will be doing any more with it for the foreseeable future though as I have some other things I want to investigate
John

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## The Drone Ranger

http://community.blynk.cc/t/beehive-monitor/5264
The details will be on here and might get some improvements
Plus the usual critique of course lol!

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## fatshark

Lidl have a small solar charger for mobile phones with a integrated 2200mAh 3.7V battery ... I've no idea what the weatherproofness of this unit is but for a tenner you can't go far wrong. It has a USB 5V 1000mAh out.  I'm ashamed to say that this is the first thing I've done to the DIY monitoring project for about 3 months.

I can also thoroughly recommend Lidl chocolate twists  :Smile: 

Nom nom nom ...

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