Slides about the project with interesting hardware details, e.g. a scale with weight sensors from very cheap bathroom scales:
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Thanks for sharing the news and kudos to @marten.schoonman and @iconize for mentioning us. Good luck with everything guys, it’s great to see you are pushing BEEP further!
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In the “Bee Observer - BOB” project we also planned to have an app for communication between sensors and beekeeper, and it would also make great sense to use it for logging the events the beekeeper observes whlie working with the hive.
We even have a (small) budget for it. Since your app is open source and everything in BOB is to be open source as well, would you be interested in modifing/extending the app to be used in the scientific project?
Greets, caro
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Hi Caro. Yes, this is certainly possible. We figured that for scientific use you need the data to be very structured to be able to analyse and compare results. So clear fields to enter for most things beekeepers would want to note with a date of course. And with clear options to select. This is something Beep has been working on over the last weeks (or rather months) and we call a ‘bee data taxonomy’. It is already translated in two languages and can be easily translated to German as well. And it can be extended if things are missing. We hope to finalise this version in about one month. I have also responded to your email you sent me with some more details. Cheers, Marten
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Sorry @marten.schoonman and @iconize that we have not done the German translation already. So we will wait for Beep version 2 and then do the translation task.
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Create you own inspection list!
The new version of the digital Stockkarte is in beta test phase. It’s main features is the possibility to select the items you want to in- or exclude from your list of inspection items! See a screenshot of the ‘edit inspection’ screen below. If you are interested to preview the new version, please email me at marten@beep.nl.
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Beep version 2 is available! The highlights:
- You can personalise your inspection sheet, picking items from a pre-set list (see image below)
- Thanks to great help the Beep webapp is fully translated to German!
- Many enhancements such as editing inspections, data download and adding reminders to your digital calendar.
To go to the app directly: http://app.beep.nl
The manual can be found here: Manual Beep app version 2 | BEEP - Bijenmonitoring
The newsletter for version 2 is here: Newsletter July 2018 | BEEP - Bijenmonitoring
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Hi @marten.schoonman and @iconize,
congratulations and thanks for your hard work! Will you consider to update https://github.com/pvgennip/BEEP or did you decide to keep the new application closed source?
Cheers,
Andreas.
Hi @Andreas, we will of course update the github repo on a Beep repo. But after a little while out in the field and after bugfixing :-)
Übrigens, dank Jerry Brukman und @clemens gibt es eine komplett deutsche Version von V2 der App!
Überzeugen Sie sich selbst: BEEP | Bienenmonitor
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Cool, looking forward!
Spitze!
A great overview about v2 of Beep
There is now a LoRa based PCB with 2x HX711!
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What is the status of the LoRa coverage in Germany?
@marten.schoonman what do refer to with “LoRa coverage”? Do you actually mean “The Things Network”, which is building a distributed LoRaWAN network?
I really like TTN. The reason is: You can use existing TTN gateways and in case you have no gateway nearby you can add your own to the network.
Yes indeed. TTN is the crowd-sourced network. See map at The Things Network - this partly answers my question ;-) Mobile phone providers are also starting to roll it out at a fee.
Beep is not the App only but also a hardware scale! On the Workshop in Bremen we had the chance to see the Beep hardware in real:
Beep uses two normal HX711 board but solder them without pin headers to the main PCB directly. I thought this is only possible with castellated hole (“half hole”) but pim toled me that it fits also tight with nomal holes on the main PCB and the HX711 PCB.
The used load cells are 20 kg rated only. So I think this is really a weak point of the current design. Also the temperatur dependency of the load cells have to be tested.
Beep uses an interesting MCU-LoRa-Module combination, the Dragino LoRa Mini. I had this not on my plate but it seems an interesting low power alternative to a Pro Mini + RFM95. It uses the ATMega328P like the Arduino Uno, so it has also the same memory limitations. @iconize we talked about a lager memory than the Uno, but I could only find the same as the Uno in the spec.
But you have not to use the Dragino board, the Beep PCB is prepared to work with the Whisper Node LoRa from Wisen or the Ideetron Nexus.
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@clemens, we talked about the Arduino mini (which has a bit less memory than the Arduino Uno). The Dragino LoRa Mini indeed has the same memory as Arduino Uno.
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Great to hear that Beep is part of a EU Horizon 2020 funding with 8 million in total! Congratulation to @marten.schoonman and @iconize!
Topic Description
Specific Challenge:
The outputs of beekeeping can be private goods (e.g. honey production), public goods and services (e.g. pollination of wild flowers) or in-between (e.g. non-contracted pollination of crops). Many initiatives aim to expand knowledge on honeybee colonies and their environment. However, the lack of a holistic approach makes it difficult to use this knowledge to best effect. Key factors for healthy and sustainable European beekeeping are determined by what happens in or around hives but also by wider socioeconomic and ecological conditions. However, much still needs to be learnt about the interactions of stressors affecting honeybees and their relative contribution to colony losses. The EFSA is developing an integrated risk assessment through the Multiple Stressors in Bees (MUST-B) project. As part of the project, the HEALTHY-B initiative provides a toolbox to assess honey bee colony health in a holistic way. This conceptual framework, the Health Status Index, needs further work to become operational. Little is known about how beekeepers assess and overcome the complexity of their business environment and what and how it influences their health management decisions (e.g. to treat against pathogens or not, to continue keeping bees or to quit, to replace lost colonies or not, to use local or introduced subspecies) and what makes them successful, including whether and how healthy colonies result in sustainable beekeeping and pollination. More information is needed on the role of actors other than beekeepers.
Scope:
Proposals will develop ready-to-use tools for operationalising the ‘Health Status Index’ developed by EFSA[1] to enable data collection and return to beekeepers, while exploring the various socio-economic and ecological factors beyond bee health to provide comprehensive blueprints of successful business model(s) of European beekeeping. Proposals should also consider issues related to emerging risks or pathogens (e.g. the small hive beetle and the Asian hornet Vespa velutina ). Proposals should aim to create an EU platform to collect and share knowledge of science and practice related to honeybees, their environment and agricultural and beekeeping practices, in order to develop and implement an action plan for a coordinated and harmonised approach to the collection of related data and information and to minimise the impact of biotic and abiotic stressors. The proposals should build on past or ongoing EU-funded research (e.g. Bee Health Workbench[2]), and take into account other relevant EU initiatives (e.g. evaluation of the EU’s apiculture measures[3], Member State bee monitoring projects), and entities (EFSA, EURL, JRC), as appropriate. Funded activities will include organising and coordinating data sets and standards relating to the environment and agricultural and beekeeping practices relevant to the monitoring of honeybee health and giving all relevant stakeholders access to such information. Work will serve to select the most promising and relevant indicators for bee health that could be developed and/or tested, and validate technologies for monitoring colonies and indicators in an automated or semi-automated way to facilitate standardised and accurate data collection and transfer. The selected project should carry out a pilot study in different representative European countries to test, standardise and validate methods for measuring and reporting selected indicators and factors affecting bee health, making it possible to give appropriate feedback to beekeepers both through dissemination and training and perform statistical analyses of the relative importance of relevant biological, chemical and environmental stressors affecting bee health and their pollination services. A multi-actor approach bringing together beekeepers, bee inspectors, other stakeholders (e.g. plant growers) and scientists (including social scientists) is required[4].
The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 8 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.
Expected Impact:
Funded activities will provide the critical knowledge necessary to understand bee colony health and identify important socio-economic components of sustainable beekeeping. The outputs of the project must contribute to:
- an EU platform on science and practice in relation to honeybees, their environment and agricultural and beekeeping practices;
- a pilot toolbox to improve monitoring of honeybee colonies and assessment of the multiple stressors that affect colony health;
- a better understanding of the management decisions made by beekeepers;
- potential and viable business models for EU beekeeping, with and without public interventions;
- support to scientists, risk assessors and policy makers in assessing and managing multiple stressors that affect the sustainability of the EU’s apiculture.
More generally, the funded activities will help beekeepers better manage honeybees and contribute to the sustainability of EU beekeeping and related pollination services.
Cross-cutting Priorities:
Socio-economic science and humanities
RRI[1]see related scientific opinion (EFSA, 2016)
[2]http://bees-dashboard.azurewebsites.net/BeesHome.html
[3]http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/evaluation/market-and-income-reports/apiculture-2013_en
[4]See definition of the ‘multi-actor approach’ in the introduction of this Work Programme part.