Awesome Hiveeyes -- A list of curated resources

Dokumentation
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Introduction

Especially when aiming to find concise information about how to replicate the work shared throughout our forum and the static documentation, like asking for »here is the simplest setup you can do, stupid!«, people investigating the content will find it to be mostly a laboratory full of discussions.

But hold on, that’s not the case everywhere! However, we admit that the gems are hard to discover. Within this section, let us take the chance to compile an index of material which we tried hard to bring into a better shape than “just discussions” the other day already.

P.S.: @clemens and others: Please go ahead and edit this page as you see fit. Maybe I am missing some important articles or posts, which we would like to add to this compilation. Maybe, I even missed to cover a whole section of subtopics?

Data logger kit

Guidelines

A list of high-level resources. The best resources we have in a sense of step-by-step instructions.

Hardware: Sensors

Scale

You will have to decide which type of scale frame you want to build.

You will also have to decide which load cell type you want. Because this subsystem is reasonably sensitive, you will find yourself sooner or later look into details of temperature compensation.

Other sensors

Hardware: Appliance

Introduction

You can either do a breadboard variant, get a decent development board, or design a custom board. People of Hiveeyes participated in designing those systems:

Open Hive

@mois documented the very first steps of their journey on his blog. It started around 2011, still in the advent of the Arduino ecosystem. @clemens took over by doing some iterations on the original design.

Autonome Zelle

There are also more advanced appliances, having been concieved by @wtf, @weef, and @roh, which are not specific to hive monitoring.

Bee Observer

Together with @caro, @Diren, @tox, and @didilamken of Uni Bremen and https://hiverize.org/, starting ~2017, the BOB-Logger has been conceived, see BOB-HAT Platine selbst löten.

Power management

Choosing and designing the power management subsystem is crucial. There will be discharging, and eventually charging, with solar, or not. There are different battery types: Lead acid, LiPo, LiFePo. It can be cold outside, or not.

So, this should be a dedicated section within this overview. However, it is currently a bit thin. Please fill the gaps, @clemens.

Firmware

There are several firmwares, for both C++/Arduino, and MicroPython. They implement different aspects, depending on their support of corresponding sensor- (HX711, ADS1232, NAU7802, BME280, etc.) and telemetry-equipment (GSM via GPRSbee or TinyGSM, ESP-WiFi, ISM radio RFM69/RFM96/LoRa/LoRaWAN, etc.).

The crafting of the different flavors of firmwares has mostly been a collaborative effort where many people have been involved. Kudos! So, while only some authors are designated in the list of firmwares below, this merely tags them as main authors or maintainers, unless otherwise noted.

The first generation of firmwares, with essential functionality, supporting Ethernet-, GSM- and WiFi- connectivity options, and currently still running in production, are:

The second generation of firmwares add features on different aspects, like improved support for WiFi and LoRaWAN, LTE Cat M1 and NB1, and partly include captive portals for remote configuration in order to improve installation convenience.

The most advanced, convenient and robust firmwares, currently running in production, are:

Backend system

Hiveeyes DAQ

The Hiveeyes DAQ backend is focused on technical aspects around flexible data acquisition, -visualization, and -export when it comes to adapters for different network links, protocols and data encoding- and serialization formats. The machinery is based on Mosquitto, InfluxDB, Grafana, and Kotori.

Assembled from FOSS components, you can either run the system on your own premises, see e.g. GitHub - hiveeyes/hiveeyes-backend-docker: Hiveeyes Backend in a box, or you can join us on the collective data acquisition system we are operating at https://swarm.hiveeyes.org/. More details about this matter can be found at Meßdaten an die Hiveeyes Plattform übermitteln and Zugangsdaten anfragen und Account erstellen.

BEEP

There is also The BEEP platform by @iconize, @marten.schoonman and friends. See also Topics tagged beep. The BEEP application is more focused on data entry management, effectively implementing a digital hive log book (Stockkarte). You can either run the FOSS version or sign up at https://app.beep.nl/. Documentation can be found at BEEP app | BEEP - Bijenmonitoring and BEEP app v3 : Helpdesk.

b.tree

@hannes_oberreiter is actively working on Projekt b.tree und b.scale and regularily shares lovely updates at Development Updates info.btree.at. It is also a digital hive log application. You can either run the FOSS version or sign up at b.tree Beekeeping Database. The documentation is at https://info.btree.at/.

General recommendations

  • The HX711 is the most popular sensor within the community. However, the ADS1232 and NAU7802 are often better alternatives, especially when it comes to their implementations on breakout boards.
  • The DHT and other similar very-low-cost sensors should be avoided.

Beyond Hiveeyes

We are also curating a list of projects from other people, both DIY and commercial. It is always nice to see what others are building.

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Asking for guidance on navigating the forum and hardware/software kits

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It seems like this could use a “protocol/transport” section between the Controller/Appliance section and the backend. Right now it seems like that’s the BERadio Telemetry part, correct? Maybe an explanation about a sparse message, to JSON, to MQTT, to subscription, then to the backend?

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