We had a number of beehives on our farm years ago. Monitoring the health of the hives was a big job and when neglected could spell disaster. This Beehive Monitoring System could mean the end of that problem. Have a look below for a short list of system features.
"This project provides a means to monitor honeybee health parameters in a hive, to allow efficient bee management and research on the quality of the colony.
Functional areas monitored by the PIC32 are:
• Outside the hive ambient conditions
• Inside the hive environmental conditions
• Health of the hive (brood size and bee traffic)
• Bee behavior for swarm management, detection / prevention
• Honey production
• Security of the hive
• Self diagnostics (temperature and voltage levels of the system controller, and functionality of sensors throughout the beehive)
There are some hive environmental conditions that can be controlled such as:
• Ventilation
• Temperature (heat or cool)"
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It’s always cool reading about how someone solved a practical problem in a creative manner (although, I would have used Atmel chips personally [Just trying to start a war here]). I liked the very descriptive writeup for the contest entry. Hope they do well in the contest, but even more I hope his research pans out. Could help the world a lot if more people took time to develop tools like this to further our understanding of the problems our world faces.