Integration "beeLogger" / Beehive Monitoring

Third party integrations
#1

Hi all,
since I am planning to start with beekeeping at some point, I thought about an option to monitor information of the beehive within home assistant.
Sure, there are many options how to monitor the weight of the hive, the temperatures and so on - but I found an interesting project which can already do most of the important things.

The project is called “beelogger” and it is an open source project based on an Arduino.
It can measure the weight of the hive, count the bees flying in / out, the temperature and humidity and works with a solar power source as well as some batteries.

Right now, I am in contact with the support / developers of the bee Logger, to see how an integration into Homeassistant could be done…

First of all, the beelogger is collecting all measurements 4 times an hour (every 15minutes) - and sending the data to a server application once per hour.
The datatransfer will be done either over wifi, lan or - if required per GSM module.

You can host your own webserver - or can use a webspace provided by the community (for free)…
Right now, there’s no defined API or interface for a communication with other systems available - but this is why I am creating this topic.

I haven’t built any kind of integration for HomeAssistant so far, but I am very interested in starting this project… but I would need some help…

Is there someone who does beekeeping already?
Is there someone who would be interested in such an integration?
Is there someone who would help me developing this thing?

Thanks a lot :slight_smile:
& Cheers,
Chris

#2

Chris,

How’s it going any updates on your project yet? I am currently building several monitors to insert into my hives this spring when I do splits in a few weeks. I’ve created 6 nodes, 1 per hive monitoring weight, temp, humidity, altimeter pressure in the hive, and sound recording to monitor for swarm alerts. Sampling is done 1x hr and transmitted over wifi for now to the HA server. What if any data did bee logger provide you?

Lee

#3

Hey,
the guys from beeLogger have implemented a way on how you can pull information from their System (using their Services / Community Server) using the Scrape platform.

Unfortunately, I were not able to continue this project, because things have changed and it is unlikely that I can start with a Beehive in the near future… :frowning:

#4

Hi,
I’m interested of keeping bees and of course almost first thing is to think how to use Home Assistant for the hive(s). :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
What hardware and environment are you using? I was thinking this might be done easily with ESPHome. The hardest part might be the sound monitoring, what is your solution for that?

#5

According this accelerometer could be more reliable than a sound recorder. Maybe one RuuviTag into the hive could be a one stop solution, if it’s accelerometer is sensitive enough for the job?

#6

Hi,
This is for the “beelogger” in particular - which is a complete Project including all Hardware.
On their Website there is a documentation what components are required and how to build the System to Monitor your hive.

But as Said - unfortunately I don’t have the time to so anything with bees for the next years - too many other Projects die to some unexpected Changes

#7

I’m currently working on assembling the protoboards with the various sensors. I’ve got overkill going on so bear with me. I’m using 1 dht11 for temp & humidity, 1 bmp280 for temp & press, 1 ds18b20 temp probe, 4 hx711 load cells for weighing the hive and 1 inmp441 mic. These are all connected to esp32 running on 1 - 2w solar panel and 2 18650 cells in parallel.

All 3 temp readings are averaged together in the dashboard. These are transmitted via wifi from the beeyard in my backyard to the HA server in the house. I’ll be monitoring honey flow with weight sensors and humidity, the microphone will listen for the amplitude increase that usually occurs during swarming and the temp and pressure are just extra readings in case I can see a correlation between other events.

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