The alpha-hacker of the local hackerspace and I were trading tweets earlier after I joked that we had to find a way to work honeybees into the place. He called my bluff, though, bringing up an idea that my husband and I have been knocking about for awhile--namely, concocting a monitoring system for the hive. I mean, there's no shortage of tragedy and misery to go around in this world, but opening a cold, damp, lifeless hive matted with bee carcasses is distinctly Not Fun. What would be useful is to be able to monitor vitals like temperature (internal vs. external) and the (internal) humidity that can doom an otherwise healthy hive. Possibly even CO2 levels besides, to get a rough sense of the airflow. All in real time.
But. There's this little consideration of data transmission, with beehives tending to be more rurally situation--not exactly optimized for broadband access. Which is more or less a deal-breaker, if I don't build on the backbone of morse code transmitted via AM signals, as Alpha-hacker suggested. Beyond transmitting the data, other requirements for that kind of setup would be:
- High efficiency circuity, ideally powered by solar-charged batteries
- Ability to withstand swamp-like humidity levels (combined temperatures that can vary between close to freezing and well into the 90s F)
- Some mechanism for encapsulation (to protect from bee/hive parasites, particulates, and the bees' own tendency to shellack any non-smooth surface with wax or propolis)
- A price tag that would make sustainable manufacturing and wide-scale adoption feasible.
That last requirement might very well be impossible, except for researchers and deep-pocketed hobbyists. So I'm not exactly rushing off to the workshop with dollar signs in my eyes.
But, technologically, we're at a stage where the pieces of this sort of application are well within reach, and need only the economies of scale to take off. I'm not necessarily talking about beekeeping, which has unique considerations. But the combination of ubiquitous broadband, miniturized processors, solid state data storage, off-the-grid power and micro-messaging (e.g. SMS) will scratch many, many itches in the next few years. That's how a jest turns into "Whoa---we could actually pull this off..." (Actually, I worked for a company that, quite literally, originated with a flippant remark. These things happen.)
Until I get off my backside long enough to decode Morse and webify the data or rural broadband really takes off, the wired beehive will not happen, at least not for our Ladykins. But that doesn't mean that it's not an awesome time to tinker.
