HiveTool.org

Dev Kit PCB installed on a Pi 2.

NEWS FLASH

Updated March 5th 2016

New Developers Kit hardware for the Raspberry Pi platform is available now!

'Did you know - The new 0.7.3 Image just released 3-3-16 is the most complete working compilation of the Hivetool modules and Raspian Linux software'

This interim solution brings us a step closer towards the goal of a complete turnkey system.
Features:

• Plug and Play - all the sensors plug in.
• 12 VDC power supply with battery voltage monitoring
• Supports
  • HX711 24 bit ADC and 4 load cells in parallel.
  • Two DHT22 temperature/humidity sensors.
  • TSL2591 Lux sensor
  • Rain Gauge

Read more about hardware.

Participate in our new Forums http://hivetool.org/d/forum

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Links to hives have moved to hivetool.net

HiveTool™

HiveTool™ is a collection of readily available, off-the-shelf hardware and free, open source software that continuously monitors a beehive. Computerized hive monitors provide real time and historic data and graphs of weight, internal and ambient temperature, humidity and light levels which give the beekeeper a noninvasive view into the hive. HiveTool won the 2015 Bayer Bee Care Community Leadership Award.

• Hivetool.org - Documentation, instructions, and a forum for discussions on how to set up a bioserver to monitor a bee hive.

• Hivetool.net - Access the network of monitored hives: status, graphs, download data, view the video feeds.

Uses

Hive Management

Knowing what is happening in the hive is crucial to proper hive management. By knowing the beginning, end, and quantity of nectar flows, bee keepers can determine when to add and remove supers, when to move hives and where to locate hives to maximize honey production. Read More

Climate and Land Use Research

Plant/pollinator interaction is used to measure the performance of the environment, instead of the performance of individual hives. Read More

Education and Bee Science

A program to attract students to Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM). Bee science includes agriculture, biology, botany, chemistry, computing, food, industrial arts, math, physics, programming, statistics – in short, something for everyone. Read More

Hardware

Developers Kit

An early goal of Hivetool was to develop a $50 scale. A developers kit to get beta units in the field for testing, gather user feedback, and provide a platform to foster open source community development is available at cost plus a voluntary contribution ... Read More

Commercial Sensors

A scale hive (or bioserver) consists of a computer (desktop, laptop, router, SBC/SOC such as Raspberry Pi), which is used to record, display, and analyze data from sensors such as scales, thermometers, hygrometers, microphones, cameras, photocells and rain gage. Listed below are readily available, commercial, off the shelf products that are currently in use or undergoing development and testing. Read More

Software

For detailed installation instructions, see How to load hivetool on the Pi.

Hivetool can be used as a:

1. Data logger that provides data acquisition and storage.
2. Bioserver that displays, streams, analyzes and visualizes the data in addition to data acquisition and storage.

Read More.

Bee Counter

Tracks

BeeCounter

While a scale can reveal nectar flows, orientation flight and the general health of the hive, it doesn't answer all the questions. A bee counter using low cost off-the-shelf hardware is being designed and tested. Read More.

Two different approaches are shown,

• Tracks, a video based tracking software.
• BeeCounter, based on openCV libraries.

How To

User manual, construction plans, solar design, troubleshooting. Read More

Hive Selection and Manipulation

Guidelines from Protocol for Scale Hive Measurements of the Honey Bee Nectar Flow. Read More

Data Warehouse

Since HiveTool™ is open source/open notebook, the entire primary record is publicly available online as it is recorded. Storing, organizing and providing access to the data is necessary. Read More

About

This open source project is comprised of beekeepers who work in electronics and information technology. Our goal is to produce software tools to monitor, manage and research bees and honey production. Read More

To Do

Lots to do! Whether you are a web site developer, database administrator, or programmer, there is something for you. Look over the list below - Read More

Why

Why put a computer in a hive? Read More

Projects

• South Carolina Hive Instrumentation Project
• Bioacoustics
• Bioserver
• History

Site Index

Site Index

Contact

For comments, questions, or suggestions, please send an email to info at this webite, hivetool.org.