Save the Bees - IoT Bee Hive Monitor - blog 5

Welcome to the #blog5 of IoT Bee Hive monitor. In the previous blog, we created a classification model to detect bees and implemented bee count using the FOMO object detection model.

In this blog, we will discuss the bee colonies, analyse the collected data, to learn the honey bee behaviour.   

Detection Setup 

In the Detection Setup phase, we used the Arduino Pro Nicla Vision board and the OpenMV library to capture images of the beehive entrance and process them to count the number of bees. We train an object detection model to recognize bees in the images, which enables us to accurately count the number of bees entering and exiting the hive.

Send data to the IoT cloud

Once we have collected the data on the bee count, temperature, and humidity, we need to store and analyze it. To achieve this, we use the Arduino MKR WAN 1310 board to send the data to the IoT cloud. This allows us to access the data from anywhere and perform real-time analysis to gain insights into the health and behaviour of the hive.

1. Install the necessary libraries for the MKR WAN 1310, including the Arduino LoRa and MKRWAN libraries.

2. Create a new sketch and enter the code to send the sensor data, and bee count from the Arduino Pro Nicla Vision and send it to ThingSpeak.

#include <MKRWAN.h>
#include <Wire.h>
#include <SPI.h>
#include <LoRa.h>
#include <Adafruit_Sensor.h>
#include <Adafruit_BME280.h>

#define BME_SCK 13
#define BME_MISO 12
#define BME_MOSI 11
#define BME_CS 10

#define SEALEVELPRESSURE_HPA (1013.25)

Adafruit_BME280 bme(BME_CS, BME_MOSI, BME_MISO, BME_SCK);

void setup() {
  // Start serial communication
  Serial.begin(9600);

  // Initialize LoRa module
  LoRa.begin(868E6);

  // Connect to LoRaWAN network
  while (!LoRaWAN.begin(ABP)) {
    Serial.println("Failed to connect to network");
    delay(10000);
  }

  // Initialize BME280 sensor
  bme.begin();
}

void loop() {
  float temperature = bme.readTemperature();
  float humidity = bme.readHumidity();
  float pressure = bme.readPressure() / 100.0F;
  float altitude = bme.readAltitude(SEALEVELPRESSURE_HPA);
  int bee_count = 0; 
  
  // read packet
    while (LoRa.available()) {
      bee_count = (int)LoRa.read();
    }


  // Send data to ThingSpeak
  String data = "field1=" + String(temperature) + "&field2=" + String(humidity) + "&field3=" + String(pressure) + "&field4=" + String(altitude) + "&field5=" + String(bee_count);
  int status = LoRaWAN.sendString(data);

  // Print data and status
  Serial.println(data);
  Serial.print("Status: ");
  Serial.println(status);

  // Wait for 10 seconds before sending data again
  delay(10000);
}

Analysis of honey bee colonies

• The bee detection result

The bee detection and tracking results are shown on the colour image (Separate code)

• Frequency of honey bee's in and out activity

  On average, a healthy honey bee colony can have anywhere from 20,000 to 60,000 bees.

  Hour	Frequency of Bees
  6am	1000
  7am	2000
  8am	4000
  9am	6000
  10am	8000
  11am	10000
  12pm	9000
  1pm	8000
  2pm	6000
  3pm	4000
  4pm	2000
  5pm	1000

   

• Temperature vs bee count

By analyzing this data, we can identify correlations between temperature and bee activity, and gain insights into how temperature affects the behaviour of honey bees in the hive.

Wrapping up the Project

You can find the project blogs below. 

Conclusion