The name is not a joke, ZigBee is a rapidly growing network protocol that is specialized to satisfy the internet of things concept where Bluetooth and Wifi are failing (I am aware there are newer versions of both of those protocols that are attempting to compete with ZigBee; see BLE, 6LowPAN). As a disclaimer, I do work for a company that has specialized experience in ZigBee, but we also work with the other protocols as well. My interest here was actually completely as a hobby to encourage bee populations around my cottage in North Eastern Ontario, but after a meeting the other day I was given a link to this community and realised my engineering experience may be of some use as well.
I looked over the discussions thus far in the electronics tag and many of the systems proposed look good. I do not want to detract or in any way derail those efforts. My company allows us some free time each month to develop based on our whims, and since I had already been developing variable sensor nodes, this seems like the absolute best place to actually be able to field test what we produce. It is still quite early in development, but nothing motivates like a community.
The whole idea is still new to me, so I'm not entirely sure how I can get involved in the community and how you can help me. Since part of my work involves our companies IP I can't share that, but there are definitely parts of the firmware and electronics that I will need more coders, and people experienced with sensors/signal conditioning, and power electronics to actually set a good pace on this project. Ideally, if you're in Toronto we can even meetup.
Anyways, here's a quick breakdown of what I'm thinking, sorry but I've only had since last night to really think about this.
- Longer wireless range than other protocols (in theory up to 1km open air, I can reliably get over 100m in dense urban environments when outdoors; i.e. Toronto). Note this is without any special antennae, etc.
- Low energy, ZigBee is designed to allow devices to operate on batteries, ideally my work is hoping to create sensors that can run on coin cell batteries for a couple months at a time. However there are also existing proposals to power these via solar, manual, etc. power sources.
- Reliability, network adaptability: ZigBee is a self-healing mesh network. The benefits will vary widely based on how we implement hardware and the nodes as a whole. An easy example would be, you could setup/configure/test your sensor in the house, walk it out to the hive and install it; i.e stick it in the hive. The network will handle rerouting.
- Sensor variability (bad name I know), I have already integrated temperature and IR/Ambient light sensors, anything that can talk I2C can be integrated in minutes, maybe an hour. Basically a single node can be responsible for multiple sensors, and you can add/remove as needed. (I2C does come with it's own addressing limit)
- Low costs: each hive only has sensors in/around it, all data is passed through the network to the coordinator, where it is saved/displayed/uploaded to cloud. This may reduce hardware costs; minimal wiring if any, nodes are cheap approx. 25$ each. Again depending on how this is setup it may be one node per hive or one node for multiple hives. Costs come down with volume and as ZigBee becomes more adopted (under 10$ is already possible).
The purpose of this is not to simply throw technology at a problem, I want to focus on sensors, and ultimately the data, that a beekeeper will find useful, whether it is because it's hard to get, harmful to the bees to get, or simply time consuming/costly to get. So here are some questions I have specific to beekeeping:
1) What actions performed by a beekeeper are a detriment to the hive? I've been told opening the hive may be a source of stress on bee colonies.
2) What information would be of use to a beekeeper but at present it is impractical or difficult to gather? I've read temperature, mass, possibly humidity, but there has to be more than that. Even if it's just temperature at multiple locations within the hive.
3) What kinds of events would a beekeeper want to be notified about? Sudden drops in temperature? Lack of hive activity?
4) What can be done to integrate sensors into a hive unobtrusively? Is this a concern? I heard bees may eat up resins, and cover things in propolis. This may lead to electronics failures, or just sensor obfuscation. Could propolis be used to actually protect the sensors and cause the bees to ignore them?
Sorry for the wall of text.
