Note
We have transitioned this section to the community forum at https://community.hiveeyes.org/c/announcements. Feel welcome to join us!
.. seealso:: https://community.hiveeyes.org/t/package-upgrades/130
We managed to publish some historical data from Markus Euskirchen, Clemens and Sepp Gruber, Markus Hies, Alexander Wilms and Frank Hartmann using the new CSV data acquisition feature. Thank you all for collecting the data and have fun exploring it!
.. seealso:: https://community.hiveeyes.org/t/publishing-historical-data/126
Markus Hies finished :ref:`beelogger` version 2, his RaspberryPi_-based monitoring system. See also http://blog.hies.de/?p=281. Cheers! Markus is also aiming to use our backend infrastructure for measurement data collection. We are looking forward to that!
TerkinData C++ is a convenient library for handling sensor readings. It helps to decouple the sensor reading domain from the telemetry domain in a typical data logger application. While providing a generic interface, it can serialize measurement values to CSV and JSON formats.
Richard and Andreas upgraded the software releases on our platform server
swarm.hiveeyes.org to their most recent versions.
The upgrade worked fine, we didn't have any issues.
Now we're running:
- InfluxDB 1.2.0 (0.13.0 so far)
- MongoDB 2.4.10 (no change)
- Grafana 3.0.4 (3.0.2 so far)
- Mosquitto 1.4.10 (1.4.8 so far)
- Kotori 0.11.0 (0.10.10 so far)
We also added more capacity to the machine, it's now offering four CPU cores and 2048 MB main memory. We will add more resources on demand.
Karsten put a sensor node together with a beehive scale from Andreas Nickel on his balcony. Cheers!
- https://hiveeyes.org/docs/arduino/firmware/node-wifi-mqtt/README.html
- https://swarm.hiveeyes.org/grafana/dashboard/db/kh
- https://swarm.hiveeyes.org/api/hiveeyes/kh/cfb/hive1/data.txt?from=2017-01-28
Welcome to https://community.hiveeyes.org/!
Markus Euskirchen of :ref:`euse-bienenwaage` joins our regular meetings. It was a pleasure to meet you in person, finally!
The Open Hive firmware now also supports the ESP8266_. Cheers, Clemens!
.. seealso:: https://hiveeyes.org/docs/arduino/firmware/node-gprs-http/README.html
For measuring fine dust particulates, the Berlin chapter of Freifunk is considering using our infrastructure, see also https://wiki.freifunk.net/Umweltstation.
Marten Schoonman and Pim van Gennip of the :ref:`beep-platform` get in touch with us.
Karsten gets in touch with Aaron of the :ref:`OSBH` project, see also https://community.akerkits.com/t/introduce-yourself/18/34.
Andreas Nickel visited us in Berlin and we talked about future plans regarding the beehive scale. It was a pleasure, thanks!
Jan-Piet Mens sent a tweet about us, cheers!
Some people answered:
- https://twitter.com/sisomm/status/798893680979509248
- https://twitter.com/thisDaveJ/status/798893894612070400
- https://twitter.com/cfwhisperer/status/798905810680057860
- https://twitter.com/johanjanssen42/status/798993934487724032
Some people liked and/or retweeted it:
- https://twitter.com/draskodraskovic
- https://twitter.com/pierrecdn
- https://twitter.com/dobermai
- https://twitter.com/vernemq
- https://twitter.com/thisDaveJ/status/798893894612070400
- https://twitter.com/EomerilDunedael
- https://twitter.com/philippadelt
- https://twitter.com/kartben/status/798890788897832960
- https://twitter.com/juzam
- https://twitter.com/dr45k0
- https://twitter.com/Mainflux
We restored and republished contents of beedata.com and the OSBH Forum from the Internet Archive, see
Often cited is "Listen to the Bees" by Rex Boys, a writing dedicated to the work of the late Eddie Woods. Also, some OSBH forum threads share some interests, e.g. Investigations into low-cost load cells and Load Cell Integration.
Uwe joins our regular meetings, we had some great times together.
Alexander Wilms of :ref:`stockwaage-nettetal` contributed the Homie-firmware based sketch for an ESP8266_-based sensor node to our firmware repository. Thanks a bunch!
There's also some documentation with schematics and more at https://hiveeyes.org/docs/arduino/firmware/node-wifi-mqtt-homie/README.html. Alexander writes about his setup at https://www.imker-nettetal.de/esp8266-beescale-erste-eindruecke/.
Alexander Wilms of :ref:`stockwaage-nettetal` asked us to check some details of his new ESP8266_-based setup using mqttwarn_ and check_mk.
It was a pleasure, voilà: mqtt-tools/mqttwarn#215
Carolin Zschippig and Thorsten Kluß of the :ref:`hiverize` project visited us in Berlin. It was a pleasure for us.
This was great for us. We talked to many people who were interested in our efforts and progress. Thanks for stepping by!
We have been mentioned by Dave Darko, who enjoyed having a chat with us: https://hackaday.io/page/2347-maker-faire-berlin-2016
Clemens will be at the Maker Faire Berlin again, cheers! It will take place from September 30 to October 02.
See https://maker-faire.de/maker/berlin/2016/open-hive-und-hiveeyes/.
A minor contribution to the :ref:`hiverize` project to use the Hiveeyes backend:
- Hiverize/Sensorbeuten#1
- https://github.com/hiveeyes/Hiverize-Sensorbeuten/blob/hiveeyes-backend/backend.rst
- We released our new website at https://www.hiveeyes.org/ and tried hard to aggregate and link to the various bits of information in a different way. Just in-time for the Stadthonigfest (see below).
Karsten and Clemens are exhibitors at the yearly »Stadthonigfest Berlin 2016«.
.. seealso::
- http://prinzessinnengarten.net/event/stadthonigfest/
- https://www.imkerverein-berlin.de/wordpress/index.php/2016/08/18/stadthonig-fest-am-3-9-2016/
Karsten and Clemens at the Stadthonigfest 2016 in Berlin
Clemens made some business cards for us. Thanks!
Introduce the :ref:`generic-firmware`, a flexible software breadboard for sensor-, transceiver- and gateway-nodes. This is now based on the RadioHead_ and :ref:`beradio-c++` libraries for radio transmission. For building it, we switched to the fine `Arduino-Makefile`_.
Welcome LoRa! Cheers, Richard!
- :ref:`open-hive-firmware` running on the :ref:`openhive-box` (GitHub)
- :ref:`scale-adjust-firmware` (GitHub)
- :ref:`BERadio`, our Radio-to-MQTT forwarder (GitHub)
- :ref:`Kotori`, our backend system for data acquisition (GitHub)
- :ref:`hiveeyes-system` (GitHub)
- June 27: SODAQ Forum: Hive scale code
- June 19: Karsten asks for Freifunk im mauergarten
- June 18: Summary from Clemens at `Measuring the weight of a beehive`_
- June 13: SODAQ Forum: Hive scale design
- May 28: OSCE challenge: Set up an open source bee monitoring system to which anyone can contribute and share data easily
We start building firmwares automatically from our `Hiveeyes Arduino`_ repository at GitHub.
Acquiring a firmware and programming it to your sensors node is now just a matter
of sending a HTTP POST request to https://swarm.hiveeyes.org/api/hiveeyes/$DEVICE_TOPIC/firmware.hex,
see also :ref:`arduino:firmware-builder` documentation for more details.
Karsten has a nice summary about our project from a different angle, enjoy reading http://karstenharazim.de/bienenmonitoring-hiveeyes-ping/.
While already consuming measurement data via MQTT, we start accepting measurements through POST requests to our new HTTP API. Data acquisition is now just a matter of:
export DEVICE_TOPIC=testdrive/area-42/node-1
echo '{"temperature": 42.84, "humidity": 83, "weight": 33}' | http POST https://swarm.hiveeyes.org/api/hiveeyes/$DEVICE_TOPIC/dataSee :ref:`Data acquisition over HTTP <daq-http>` for more details and :ref:`daq-php` for an example application.
`Open Source Beehives`_ starts harvesting data, cheers! Enjoy some impressions from rigging up the telemetry device and also have a look at live data.
Richard soldered a HopeRF RFM95 radio module onto a `JeeLink`_ USB adapter and started transmitting "Hello World" using the `RH_RF95 driver`_ of the fine RadioHead_ library by Mike McCauley of AirSpayce_. Cheers!
JeeLink_ carrying HopeRF RFM95 radio module
Hello World over RFM95, using RadioHead_
The first preliminary implementation of an automatic :ref:`mqttwarn-alerts` for detecting sudden weight-loss and data-loss events is ready, it will send appropriate alert notifications to beekeepers, cheers!
- Huge documentation improvements for release :ref:`version-0.4.1`
- Publish :ref:`Hiveeyes Arduino documentation <arduino:hiveeyes-arduino>` for `Hiveeyes Arduino`_ source code
- Add :ref:`handbook` about data acquisition and working with Grafana_
- Add :ref:`do-it-yourself` about how to build your own monitoring system components
- Embed and discuss some interesting events from :ref:`labhive-one`, see below
- Release and package Kotori_ :ref:`0.7.1 <kotori-0.7.1>`, the universal data sink component powering the Hiveeyes backend, amongst others
- Update project :ref:`history`
Richard and Andreas upgraded the software releases on our platform server
swarm.hiveeyes.org to their most recent versions.
The upgrade worked fine, we didn't have any issues.
Now we're running:
- Eclipse Mosquitto 1.4.8
- InfluxDB 0.13.0 (up from 0.10.0)
- Grafana 3.0.2 (up from 2.6)
- Kotori 0.7.1 (up from 0.5.1)
When upgrading InfluxDB, some database migration steps were required:
On May 23, 2016 it started raining at 23:00 hours (note the sudden drop of temperature between 23:05 and 23:20), so the hive probably gained some weight directly or indirectly through rain water (48 kg to 49 kg between 23:00 and 23:30 hours, reaching 50 kg at 01:00 hours, all times CEST).
Q: Does the water leak into the hive? Is it the electronics not behaving due to temperature drop or humidity increase?
A: Richard revealed us that he'd put a bulky chipboard on top of the hive in order to compensate on purpose for some weight-loss due to beehive work the other day. This piece of chipboard most probably have soaked up some rain water, thus responsible for the total weight increase. :-)
Robinia blossom time ahead. Richard and Laura want to make genuine Robinia honey, so they harvested the honey which is currently in the hive. You can recognize the two spots at 14:00 hours and ~20:00 hours.
Bam.
This is a weight-loss event from :ref:`hiveeyes-scale-beutenkarl` recorded on May 20, 2016 between 10:11 and 10:26 hours CEST after a bee colony started swarming at the Hiveeyes :ref:`labs beehive <labhive-one>` in Berlin Wedding.
.. todo::
There's a another story about catching the colony from a nearby Robinia tree.
More on that later from Richard.
Data currently is measured at intervals of about 15 minutes.
In the following graphs the weight of the hive is shown with the light blue line. The temperature sensor inside the hive is shown in dark blue and the sensor at the air hole, which is in the sun most times, is yellow.
Let's have a look at the data. During the cold period at the end of April the beehive loses absolute weight because the bees have to live off their reserves. In contrast, the following two weeks were amazingly warm in May, so the worker bees are getting extremely busy.
From April 29 until May 13, the weight has increased by almost 14 Kg. On some days the beehive gained 2 Kg weigth due to pollen and nectar collecting.
It was the time of the fruit blossoms, so the cherry, pear and apple trees were in bloom in the nearby allotments.
The beehive gained a lot of weight on the 2nd of May. After six o'clock in the morning the temperature begins to rise, at 7:15 the first sun rays shine on the entrance hole. The first scouts leave the beehive at 7:45 and at 8:15 everyone is in the air. The beehive suddenly loses 120g since about 1200 bees are leaving to harvest.
At 9:20, the ratio between the arriving and departing bees reverses and the weight increases rapidly.
Throughout the day, bees are flying in and out, collecting nectar and pollen, explore and report. Even as the beehive is in the shadow from 16:00 and the temperature starts sinking, the bee colony continues to collect until 20:00.
1800g have then carried home. It was a good warm and important day, after the long period of winter and the cold snap end of April.
Release `Hiveeyes Arduino`_ source code for Arduino_-compatible microprocessors.
Tobias Lenartz and Markus Börner from `Elektrischer Reporter`_ visit us to interview Richard about our project, the documentary will be aired on May 19, 2016.
Elektrischer Reporter Interview "#149: Vernetzte Bienen"
Markus Boerner and Tobias Lenartz in »ElRep #149: Vernetzte Bienen«
Richard Pobering in »ElRep #149: Vernetzte Bienen«
Rigging up the scale frame "Beutenkarl" at the Hiveeyes :ref:`labs beehive <labhive-one>` in Berlin Wedding and connecting it to the :ref:`Hiveeyes One` sensor hub. The setup was pretty quick, we were finished in approx. 30 minutes.
Scale frame "Beutenkarl" with `Bosche H30A single point load cell`_
Karsten at work
Richard is funneling the data
Data arrives
Scale frame is mounted. Back view.
Scale frame is mounted. Front view.
Weight measurements start arriving in Grafana.
Clemens gives a short overview about the progress on the Arduino Forum thread `Measuring the weight of a beehive`_:
:ref:`OpenHive` starts transmitting data. Cheers!
Grafana dashboard "BER prototype #2"
.. todo::
Get some pictures from the ESP8266_ actually transmitting telemetry data here.
Write some lines about the past and current setups at :ref:`OpenHive`.
Start integrating with mqttwarn_: Add `feature "dynamic topic targets"`_ to `incorporate topic names into topic targets`_.
:ref:`hiveeyes-one` starts transmitting data. Cheers!
Two Arduino_-based nodes talk to each other using RFM69_. We use the BERadio_ encoding for efficiently sending multiple measurement values over a 7-bit-clean communication link.
It's a harsh environment: The maximum payload size is 62 bytes. To keep battery drain at its lowest, we want to squeeze as much data into the payload as possible to reduce the number of radio beams required to transmit collected telemetry data.
The receiving antenna, see also `DIY antennas for RFM69`_
The first :ref:`HEnode` sensor node sits in a hive approx. 120 meters away in line-of-sight distance through a single tree. Transmits telemetry data over radio link.
A JeeLink_ RFM69_ receiver is connected to the Gateway-JeePi_, a RaspberryPi_ SoC machine through USB, acting as gateway and used as development and integration system. This runs the BERadio_ gateway subsystem, a convenient serial-to-`MQTT`_ forwarder written in Python. Also, we compile Arduino_ code on this machine and reprogram the devices.
Gateway with RaspberryPi_ and JeeLink_
.. todo:: GraphViz_ flow graphs for giving insight into the communication paths between these components
Grafana dashboard "BER prototype #1"
- Announce beta version of the :ref:`Hiveeyes platform <Hiveeyes platform>` hosted on
swarm.hiveeyes.org
Work on bringing :ref:`HiveeyesOne` into the field
The first measurements arrive in Grafana
Dazz starts the `Hive Monitor`_ project featuring the `Hive Monitor Vagrant VM`_ and some `Hive Monitor Python scripts`_ for playing around with MQTT_ and forwarding payloads between the serial interface and the `Eclipse Mosquitto`_ message broker.
Proof-of-concept telemetry platform based on `Eclipse Mosquitto`_, InfluxDB_ and Grafana_ with Kotori_ 0.3.2 and BERadio_ 0.4.4. See upstream changes:
Further improve :ref:`HiveeyesOne` hardware and software
Open Hive is at the `Maker Faire Berlin`_ 2015 from 2015-10-03 to 2015-10-05. Clemens Grubers "Open Hive" project was covered in `The Very First Maker Faire Berlin Doesn’t Miss a Beat <Maker Faire Berlin 2015_>`_ by Donald Bell. Enjoy reading:
Open Hive at Maker Faire Berlin 2015. Excerpt from the article «The Very First Maker Faire Berlin Doesn’t Miss a Beat« published in `Make magazine`_ by Donald Bell, October 5, 2015.
:ref:`openhive-temperature-array` prototype
Open Hive temperature array, prototype left with PCB, right with ribbon cable
Continue working on :ref:`HiveeyesOne`
Build upon `serial-to-mqtt`_ by `Andy Piper`_ and `Didier Donsez`_ and iterate into
- the :ref:`beradio-spec`, an efficient transport protocol for radio link communication. Throws Bencode_ into the mix of the constrained environment of RFM69_ with Moteino_.
- the BERadio_ Python library, for forwarding payloads between a JeeLink_ receiving data via RFM69_ on a serial interface of a RaspberryPi_ and the MQTT_ message broker `Eclipse Mosquitto`_.
Investigate SPI-Flash & Dualoptiboot for over-the-air programming
- Hacking on Hiveeyes at the `Chaos Communication Camp 2015`_ from August 13-17, 2015 in Mildenberg
- Baby steps for BERadio_, first steps with Bencode_ on Arduino_
:ref:`openhive-seeeduino-stalker` prototype, see also `Open Hive Shields`_
Open Hive Seeeduino Stalker Kit
- Setup
elbanco.hiveeyes.orgas an integration server, we are running Debian 8.3 (jessie)
The Open Hive Bee Scale is a low-cost load cell platform (prototype II)
- Clemens is collaborating with others about best-of-breed GPRS components
- Start research on `MQTT-SN`_ with `MQTT-SN-Arduino`_ library
Open Hive load cell platform (prototype I)
- News from Markus: http://www.euse.de/wp/blog/2015/01/bienenwaage-reloaded/
- Register domain "hiveeyes.org"
- Start the email distribution list
- Spin up Trac_ instance as a `Wiki of the Hiveeyes project <Hiveeyes project_>`_
- Start working on a sensor node network based on Felix Rusu's LowPowerLab_ RFM12B_/RFM69_ libraries.
Two nodes transmitting via RFM12B_
- News from Markus: http://www.euse.de/wp/blog/2014/11/voltaic-solar-charger-in-action/
Start ...
- organizing regular get-togethers
- hardware evaluation and prototyping
- architecture, concept and design
- `Workshop digitales Bienenmonitoring`_ at `mauergarten e.V.`_ on September 21, 2014
- Dazz starts collecting information about building an :ref:`apidictor` at https://gist.github.com/dazz/11309904 and also prepared Python source code performing FFT-analysis with SciPy/NumPy at https://github.com/c-base/apidictor.
Markus Euskirchen of `Open Bee Hive`_ has some news:
http://www.euse.de/wp/blog/2014/07/bienenstockwaage-wireless/
Open Bee Hive Scale Wireless based on the `RedFly-Shield`_ from `Watterott`_.
Bee Hive Scale Graph: http://www.euse.de/honig/beescale/graph.php
Clemens Gruber starts the Open Hive open source beehive monitoring project
Open Hive :ref:`openhive-cnc-machining-workshop-2014`
Pre-Work Talk #7 -- Bees from IXDS.
In his talk "Bees Dance" Tim Landgraf reveals how robotics are involved with bees, Yair Kira presents his project "Bees Armchair" and beekeeper Clemens Gruber shares how he gets insights from his beehive through computer based monitoring in the "Open Hive" project. Clemens starts talking at 26:00.
Enjoy!
Result Dataset 2013/06 Day 08-17 from Clemens Gruber of Open Hive displaying different hive temperatures, humidity, brightness, pressure and audio fft.
- The canonical Arduino Forum thread `Measuring the weight of a beehive`_ gets started
- News from Markus: http://www.euse.de/wp/blog/2012/07/ulengewicht/
News from Markus:
- http://www.euse.de/wp/blog/2012/03/solarladegerat-fertig/
- http://www.euse.de/wp/blog/2012/05/bienengewicht/
Markus Euskirchen of `Open Bee Hive`_ starts the „Bienenkisten-Monitoring“ open source beehive monitoring project:
- http://www.euse.de/wp/blog/2011/11/bienen-ueberwachen/
- http://www.euse.de/wp/blog/2011/12/lauschen-statt-wiegen/
- http://www.euse.de/wp/blog/2011/12/teileliste/
Clemens of Open Hive and Markus will get in touch later working on early prototypes of beehive scales.