Home-grown hive monitor

I finished the first version of my hive monitor here. it's running in test mode for now, and it's not at all optimised so it's slow (bee patient if you decide to look).

It captures temperature measurements for each of two hives, in the brood, above the brood box and on top of the coverboard. It also captures the humidity on the coverboard. There's also an infrared camera streaming video so you can see the girls doing whatever they do - I certainly cannot work out what they're up to. The framerate is 4fps which is fine for here, but I suspect it will be much slower from elsewhere.

I intend to add weight sensors to this, but it has so far cost under €30 per hive.

Very Good!

Temperature trace suggests you have brood in the poly (brood area being maintained close to 33C).
Possibly not in the wooden hive (or at least not near the sensor).

Still trying to figure out how you could do it for €60 total ... amazing!

How about an IR light under the box, to get illumination deeper into the slot?

Brilliant!

Details of the kit you used to do it at that price would be appreciated.

Very interesting but what hardware are you using and how are you powering it ?
Seems to me the camera alone would be chewing up batteries.

I'm planning on having temperature and humidity monitoring using an emonTH with modified
firmware already on the site for hive monitoring, but doesn't have the radio bandwidth for any sort of video.

Bob D. said:

Very interesting but what hardware are you using and how are you powering it ?
Seems to me the camera alone would be chewing up batteries.

I'm planning on having temperature and humidity monitoring using an emonTH with modified
firmware already on the site for hive monitoring, but doesn't have the radio bandwidth for any sort of video.

Click to expand...

The hardware is a Raspberry Pi model A+, powered from the mains - I've used a 40m reel to reach the hives from the nearest power source outdoors. The communication is via WiFi through a Fontenna, a directional antenna that boosts the signal. The hardware list is:

• 5 x DS18B20 3m temperature sensors, 2 in each hive and 1 for the ambient temp - €11.39
• 2 x DHT22 temp/humidity sensors, 1 in each hive - €5.88
• 3 x 4k7 Ohm resistors - €0.30
• The Raspberry Pi camera, NoIR model - €20.78
• 3 x IR LEDs to provide lighting - €2
• Raspberry Pi model A+ - €23.46
• Long camera cable - €8.13
• Micro SD card - €8
• WiFi dongle - €6.30
• Waterproof junction box - €6.94

That gives a total of €93.18, or €46.59 per hive. OK, I lied about the €30 The reality is that the camera is really just bling: removing that really does bring it down to around the €30 mark per hive. And, of course, I haven't costed my time!

The weight stuff will add:

• 8 x weight sensors, one per corner per hive - €16.26
• 2 x HX711 A-D converters (one might do though) - €2.95

So that adds €9.61 per hive.

As Itma noticed, there's something wrong with the connections to one of the DHT22 sensors - it's returning zero. And I think I've either mixed up a couple of the sensors or they're badly positioned - I have to move them to get correct readings.

Better than good, excellent!

bpmurray said:

...
As Itma noticed, there's something wrong with the connections to one of the DHT22 sensors - it's returning zero. And I think I've either mixed up a couple of the sensors or they're badly positioned - I have to move them to get correct readings.

Click to expand...

It was actually a comparison of the blue ("brood") temperature traces in the two hives that I was commenting on.
The poly is notably stable and above 30C (typical of bees thermostatic management of brood), whereas the wood hive 'brood' trace isn't stable and gets way below 30C - which either means there's no brood or that there is, but not where that sensor is!

I appreciate that the temperature sensors won't yet be properly calibrated, but it is clear that you are still getting very cold nights, yet (at least in the poly) part of the brood box is being maintained around 30C - which should reinforce our concern for the rate that colonies must be chewing through their stores at this point in the season.

Did you ever get the weight sensors working?

sussexbaker said:

Did you ever get the weight sensors working?

Click to expand...

another crowd funding bee related product....

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/wifi-bees-hive-scale-and-smartphone-app

Very interesting , i'm looking at creating bee tracking software using openCV as a bit of a fun project on the side , i'll start a thread here once ball rolling ( prob come winter ) , i'm software engineer so looking for a bee related project in some form.

Coincidentally, our local BKA had a talk last night from someone who had set up a bunch of the expensive commercially-available solutions, and he said that the things that gave them the most information was brood temp & humidity, and audio frequency and amplitude. These are stupidly cheap to capture so, once winter turns up, I think I'll have a go at updating what I have - it's "sort of" still going but needs some more updates.

very intrested in this, you've basicly allready done what i was starting to think about doing, i would love some more information on this

I was wondering why no one had invented sensors for the inside of hives - now I know people have.
Rasberry Pi is round here somewhere......................

Is any of this still working?
The link in the OP returns a 403 "Forbidden" to me.

If you are looking to monitor using a Raspberry Pi have a look at these guys: http://hivetool.net/ . As well as providing the software, they can source the kit (Hive Monitor Kit Order Form )and provide some sort of hosting. All part of the not for profit Center For Honeybee Research – Promoting a World Safe for Bees and apparently run by volunteers.