On 17th January 2023, I was given the rather unexpected news that I have been chosen as one of the challengers for the Save the Bees element14 Design Challenge. This is the first design challenge which is not of the experimenting-with type that I had entered and I had made some simple proposals, not expecting to get selected. While the kit has not arrived yet (and I haven’t received a shipping confirmation at this time), it’s probably good to start off this series of blogs with some information about me and what I proposed.
Table of Contents
About Me
My name is Dr. Gough Lui and I am an engineer and electronics hobbyist from Sydney, Australia. 
I currently work as a postdoctoral researcher in the Biomedical Engineering space with Western Sydney University and as a research assistant with Civil and Environmental Engineering in the University of New South Wales. I have an interdisciplinary background, which includes an undergraduate degree commencing in Electrical Engineering, finishing in Solar Photovoltaics Engineering with first-class honours and undertaking a Taste-of-Research in Spatial and Surveying Information Systems. I have a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering, specifically in Water Research. In my work, I support the design, assembly, testing and deployment of embedded electronics for applications in health, medicine and humanitarian fields.
Outside of work, I run my own personal blog site at https://goughlui.com where I blog about random things including product reviews, repair logs, computing, networking, retro-technology, radio, television, satellite, random observations and going on holidays. I am a licensed foundation-level radio amateur (VK2FGYL).
I have spent much time over the years at element14 as a Top Member, mostly lurking but occasionally responding to a comment here or there. I have benefited greatly from the RoadTest program which has yielded plenty of useful and interesting equipment for my bench. I have contributed a whopping 33 reviews as of this posting (with a 34th in the works) and have learned plenty from the experience. I have participated in a few Project 14 builds as well although not so much as of late. This is my first time entering a “plain” Design Challenge. Previously, I entered three “experimenting with” style Design Challenges, and was awarded the Grand Prize for the Experimenting with Thermal Switches and Experimenting with Thermistors; and Runner Up Prize for Experimenting with Current Sense Amplifiers.
What About the Bees?
Before going any further, I’ll have to admit that I’m absolutely terrified of insects. As much as bees are vital to the food chain and ecosystem as a critical pollinator, just the mere sound of a bee buzzing around the room is enough to elevate my heart rate and get me into a frenzy – I don’t fancy getting stung and I’m sure the bee would prefer not to risk their life, so we’ve spent many years avoiding each other as much as possible.
But that being said, I remember days from my youth in primary school in the mid-90s when I would go into fields of flowering clovers which were completely abuzz with a blanket of bees. Armed with a water bottle, the lunchtime activity (not officially sanctioned, of course) was to collect as many bees into the bottle as you could. Back then, nobody could have guessed the dire situation that has befallen bees worldwide.
By the mid-2000s, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) had become big talk amongst workers in the agriculture industry, especially as many outback families in Australia rely on farming to make their living. Beekeepers were finding their hives quickly moved from being buzzing to being completely dead. Having contended with floods, droughts and fires, this would put another dent into crop yields even though the population of bees worldwide as estimated from honey seem to suggest that the population still grows in spite of CCD. Anecdotally, I have never seen fields of clovers abuzz in the same way that I have as a kid. In suburban areas, bees are now few and far between even though they occasionally visit the garden, you’d have to be looking quite hard to find even one.
The cause of CCD is not conclusively known, but pesticide usage is a leading theory. It makes me feel a little guilty for using insecticide spray cans – especially if used outside, it can get into water and have widespread effects on both land and aquatic creatures. Another is the Varroa mite, a pest which targets bees and transmits diseases including one that causes wing deformities to pupae, which can be ultimately fatal. Being in Australia, the threat of Varroa seemed faraway as we were famous for being Varroa-free. However, as sentinel hives near shipping ports have now detected the presence of Varroa and localised instances have been detected at other hives which have been genetically traced back to this initial importation, it seems our ability to remain Varroa-free may not be for long. This is especially important as the bee industry is a significant part of the Australian economy, being worth AU$14bn annually, producing products such as honey and wax aside from pollinating our crops.
There is no doubt as to the importance of bees in the broader context of the world and despite my phobia of insects, I still want to do something to help. When I saw this challenge, there was some confusion from the contestants as to the time-frame as it may be much too cold in some places for bees to be active. Despite being in the southern hemisphere where it’s still a little warmer, I don’t know of any beekeepers and I still don’t fancy getting stung. So, for this challenge, I’ll be avoiding actual live bees and will instead focus on the technical aspects instead. I suppose that’s for the best – at least, that way I can say that no bees were harmed in the process!
What I Propose to Do
My original proposal was very straightforward – although it didn’t have a name. After some thought, I’ve decided to call it BeeWatch, as a play on Baywatch … the idea is that the system will monitor environmental conditions to help keep bee hives safe. This would include things like temperature, humidity (e.g. via a BME280/BME680 or similar) and particulate matter (e.g. via a SPS30). The monitoring station would be PV/battery-powered (as much as possible) and self-contained, using only LoRaWAN for connectivity thanks to the Arduino MKR WAN 1310 provided.
A stretch-goal would be for me to experiment with the Arduino Pro Nicla Vision to detect noise as a proxy of hive activity, as the board has an onboard microphone. If time permits, I will try to get some image processing going based on being pointed at a monitor showing sample images, but I suspect this may take a lot of time for someone who has no experience with AI computer vision development. It also may not prove so useful, given that bees are agile and fly rapidly, which means images may not be particularly clear (assuming you could lure them in with a flower-analogue and some nectar).
Instead, the project will focus on some of the more electronics-related aspects – things like measuring and optimising the power consumption of the MKR WAN 1310 board, designing a simple power supply set-up for PV power, RF-considerations for LoRaWAN, setting up a LoRaWAN gateway (as I have one on hand) using The Things Stack (Cloud, Discovery Free Tier) and linking that via MQTT to a server for logging of data. If time permits, I’ll try to find a way to visualise this (e.g. via NodeRed), although I suspect that time will run out before this is achieved. I’ll also do some electronics-related measurements on the Nicla Vision board as well – as I’m curious just how efficiently AI vision processing can be done. I’ve heard the board runs hot – we’ll see about that!
To keep things moving, I won’t have the time to design and get PCBs made – the turnaround can easily take 4 weeks which I just can’t afford. Instead, I’ll be doing things the old-fashioned way – with breadboards and Veroboard.
Conclusion
Bees are an important part of the world’s ecosystem and as much as I’m skittish and fear insects, I still would like to help. Even though I proposed a rather simple project revolving primarily around the monitoring of environmental parameters using LoRaWAN, I am also hoping to explore a little into what the Nicla Vision can do. Most of my experiments will focus on the technical, electronics and RF aspects and will not involve the use of live bees, but I hope that it’s helpful to others. Things will have to be done “quick and dirty” given the time-frame involved, which will be quite a bit of fun. It’s been way too long since I’ve whipped out the Veroboard!
I really didn’t expect to be chosen with such a simple proposal, but now that I have been, I hope you will join along with me in exploring the Arduino MKR WAN 1310 and Arduino Pro Nicla Vision for this application.
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