Arnia Hive Monitor

[itma]

Arnia do give credit to Eddie Woods on their website: http://www.arnia.co.uk/press_release.asp

From that page -

Currently, the team is in the process of rolling out 100 hive monitors to members of the Scottish Bee Keepers Association as part of this study. Throughout the duration of the experiment, the data is being analysed for purely scientific purposes, there is little useful information we can offer individual beekeepers at this stage. However, as an incentive to take part, participants are allowed to keep the monitors at the end of the trial, at which point all the features become fully functional.

 

[oliver90owner]

They are perhaps listening; far more credit given to Eddie Woods and quite rightly so.

The PR machine has seemingly been busy, even likely caused by reading the threads on here. Reference to the apidictor success has changed from failure to something more akin to the actual position, some five decades previously.

I may even warm to the developments, given that they may be admitting that implementing the basic technology is simply a matter of installing appropriate modern-day transducers and remotely data-logging the results. The harder bit is differentiating the relevant frequency changes to give more than a basic remote diagnostic tool.

It may well at least be a worthwhile tool for important research projects - F1 racing teams use the technology all the time - both testing and racing - after all.

All in all, Apidictor rules!

RAB

 

[Hombre]

The Apidictor was a device ahead of the technology that could fully support it. Conceived in 1940 and built when transistors and pot cores at the right price became available in the early 1960s.

The Apidictor was essentially an implementation of the ideas of Eddie Woods. Today audio data capture and sound spectrum display programs abound and with a bit of rudimentary analysis a modern implementation is possible and lets be honest it would not be an Apidictor, should not be called an Apidictor and whilst it may be attributed to the early ideas of Mr Woods, then perhaps he is the father of Bee Audio Analysis, in the same way that Jules Verne is the father of Space Travel and Arthur C Clark the father of the Telecommunicaiton Satellite.

Credit where credit is due, but please don't insist that we all lash our big toes together with cable ties RAB (Note that I haven't said that you are, but please . . . don't)

Whilst in the closed world of beekeeping it is fashionable to give peoples names to designs; in the wider world and in technology it does not always follow. Just imagine if all our bee hives and ancilliaries were to have been invented in Korea, where most everything would be a Kim, Lee or Park . . .

 

[RoofTops]

I guess the clever bit will be the automatic analysis of the sound, i.e. seperating out certain frequency bands and applying threshold for loudness, duration etc.

I read an article on sound compression (e.g. MP3) recently and was amazed at how sophisticated modern techniques are. So I guess there is an equal amount of knowledge in how to take sounds apart - which is what MP3 does before compression.

 

[EdNewman]

I also like all the extras they are talking about including, scales. humidity sensory, temp sensor etc. I'm not under the illusion that all this stuff will be able to tell you exactly what's going on in the hive, but it will probably make it much easier to make an informed decision on how you can help the bees to thrive.

 

[herefordshirehoney]

Did anyone get the email from them last night - already ordered the kit - only time will tell if its worth it .

 

[DorsetB]

Yes, I have been offered a trial package for a year. I am slightly taken aback at the cost of £60.00 per hive for the basic package - add-ons are extra according to the email.

 

[herefordshirehoney]

Same here, went for an extra slave too to monitor both of my hives. The master unit has to be connected to the mobile network somehow, this kit is usually around £150 alone without a data subscription etc, so it does seem good value that way. We'll see when the kit arrives and what the software is like etc.

 

[itma]

Did anyone get the email from them last night - already ordered the kit - only time will tell if its worth it .

I didn't.

Care to share?

 

[herefordshirehoney]

Mine are in the post and even monitoring in the post system!

 

[DorsetB]

I turned my trial down in the end, as it seemed a fun thing to try out, but not £60.00 per hive fun.

Will be following any trial results with interest though.

 

[herefordshirehoney]

Will be interesting the end price of these though as the unit contains a sim card, data connection subscription then the monitoring kit. It looks like in the initial trial its sending this data to the central server once a day. Seems good value on the trial program, but depends what the commercial pricing is.

Its early days trial wise hopefully will have some useful data if not to help me learn from. Still awaiting the royal mail delivery =). I'll try update my blog with some posts on how im getting on.

 

[herefordshirehoney]

Picked them up this morning, the size of the hive monitors are about the size of an iphone. The main unit is slightly about 2inch's deeper.

Just awaiting instructions on where to place them, I was expecting an external temp sensor for brood nest but it wasn't included, so hopefully they'll send them out separately!

The initial web portal is basic but as a trial we were warned about this, a new gui will come in time.

The hardware seems to be rabbit based controllers with arm processor, with an xbee rf module to communicate with the bee hive monitors.

Overall looks good, will be interesting to see the results.

Edit: Arnia are sending me a new unit to test with the brood sensors.

 

[Der Alte Fritz]

Seen the article in Beecraft recently?

 

[Chris B]

I did make an inquiry about the Arnia devices. Potentially they would be very good but I soon worked out they would save me at best 2 hours labour per colony per year. Unfortunately it seems the cost of ownership is too great and the devices would never pay for themselves.

Interestingly today the Bee Farmers Association has announced the launch of a 1.4m euro project which ultimately looks like direct competition to Arnia. Hopefully that will help to make it affordable, especially as the stated objectives is to make honey production less costly.

 

[herefordshirehoney]

I read the article in last months bee-craft. I'm still awaiting the new master unit to fix the issues with current one's battery draining.

 

[wirralLes]

Feedback

Any update on how the monitor info's helping?

Thanks,

Les

 

[Der Alte Fritz]

Well I contacted them back in Feb about getting some units as part of the trial and got a reply which was along the lines of 'please wait'. Since then nothing and nothing new on their website.

 

[wirralLes]

No feedback?

There must be one or two members who have been running the Arnia system for a while.

I'm puzzled that there's no user feedback to be found.

 

[VEG]

Price might have something to do with it