Bee cam

[Rob55]

Has anyone rigged up a webcam to watch their bees remotely? Mine are not near to electricity, is there anything "cheap and cheerful" available that can run on sunlight or low consumption batteries?

 

[Norton]

This is the question I asked about apiary security - all ideas are welcome.

 

[melias]

I've done it with an Axis IP camera. But wouldn't describe it as cheap or simple.

 

[MuswellMetro]

i thought about an old lap top with a cheap USB camera but how to keep it live for a long time with a 19v batterry needed...two car batteris wired up, how long would that last

think i can get orange wifi dongle with my phone contract

 

[asol]

If you're not close to electricity I assume you're not close to wifi/broadband and you have a difficult task to power and communicate back to a base location. My hive is on the back garden and a relatively simple solution is to use a wired security camera back to the house. I have 4 cameras in total, 3 looking at the house and 1 at the hive. I can look at the bees from anywhere over the Internet. Quality not brilliant but good enough to see them flying. Not particularly cheap if your only aim is to keep an eye on the bees but as a wider security system it is justifiable. I guess you could run a 100m cable if your hive is close enough to the house.

 

[MuswellMetro]

If you're not close to electricity I assume you're not close to wifi/broadband and you have a difficult task to power and communicate back to a base location. My hive is on the back garden and a relatively simple solution is to use a wired security camera back to the house. I have 4 cameras in total, 3 looking at the house and 1 at the hive. I can look at the bees from anywhere over the Internet. Quality not brilliant but good enough to see them flying. Not particularly cheap if your only aim is to keep an eye on the bees but as a wider security system it is justifiable. I guess you could run a 100m cable if your hive is close enough to the house.

well nearest house is about a mile away snd not mine, it would have to be a 7 mile cable

the wifi would be a mobile orange dongal, it comes as part of my mobile phone package und Orange EE provider it is G4 coverage by orange, good reception near my apairy as it is in the M25 corridor

just never used the dongle at home as...quite bad G4 indooors as house sheltered from phone signal

 

[asol]

Power is then the issue. Assuming a phone will last 6 hours on its battery. Battery is approx 3.8v and capacity of 1.4 AHrs.
A car battery of 12v and 60AHr will therefore last 731 hrs assuming 90% conversion efficiency. This is a month.
It wouldn't be too unreasonable to change the battery every month or use a solar charging panel.
The phone consumes about a watt of power, for solar charging you'll need something that will supply enough average power. I reckon you need a solar panel 20 times the power rating of the average demand. A 20 watt panel ought to do the job.
Calculated while in bed as missus watches rubbish zombie program on TV so no liability for accuracy!

 

[domino]

well nearest house is about a mile away snd not mine, it would have to be a 7 mile cable

the wifi would be a mobile orange dongal, it comes as part of my mobile phone package und Orange EE provider it is G4 coverage by orange, good reception near my apairy as it is in the M25 corridor

just never used the dongle at home as...quite bad G4 indooors as house sheltered from phone signal

You won't find a cheap or simple solution here. You may be better off using a camera recording to an SD card if you just want video.

 

[madasafish]

I have looked at this. A decent trail camera recording to SD will be c £250 - if you want one with wildlife capability as well as bees.. Batteries 8AA last quoted 2-4 months.

For an extra £100 add wireless back to PC for real time viewing .
Add c£100 for solar battery charging..

Then you want to locate it where no low life can steal it...(ideal as part of security system)..

I gave up : costs of the system far exceed the costs of all my bees and hives. And I can think of better things to spend £500 on: gin for a start.

 

[domino]

I have looked at this. A decent trail camera recording to SD will be c £250 - if you want one with wildlife capability as well as bees.. Batteries 8AA last quoted 2-4 months.

For an extra £100 add wireless back to PC for real time viewing .
Add c£100 for solar battery charging..

Then you want to locate it where no low life can steal it...(ideal as part of security system)..

I gave up : costs of the system far exceed the costs of all my bees and hives. And I can think of better things to spend £500 on: gin for a start.

Why wouldn't you use a GPS tracker with a location sensor feature, it'd cost you £150(ish). It would detect if the tracker moved outside a defined location and send you an SMS.

If you wanted to stream video to your PC you'd need to either subscription to a proxy service or create your own. I'm working on a little beehive computer that measures weight, temp and humidity - the code is done I'm just fiddling with the electronics, weather proof pressure sensors are a bit tricky. I looked into video and it was too much of a pita.

 

[alanf]

Has anyone rigged up a webcam to watch their bees remotely?

Not bees but I have experimented with 'cheap and cheerful' nest cameras.

The 'cheap' setup is a usb webcam either built into a nest box or basic weather proofing by taping into polythene and cable-tying to a branch. The USB extension limit is 3 metres or so which limits range to a box or shrub against the house wall if using a cable through the window to an old laptop. There are USB extenders which run the signal over a cat5/RJ45 cable up to 50 metres. The junctions need protecting, the drivers need a powered USB hub and extenders tend to be usb v1.1 only. It works better for periodic frame capture and upload than continuous streaming. Uploading to a web site allowed me to follow nest progress from anywhere I happened to be. It even captured a blackbird nest being robbed by a magpie when I was too far away to do anything about it.

Outside garden range, the problem is power consumption. The dedicated wildlife capture cameras record periodically or on IR trigger to a card. Communications use power and that's hard to provide remotely for any sustained period. In theory, there's a package of low power consumption components in a phone. It should be possible to do periodic capture, even picture upload from something like a basic android phone. Alternatively there are projects to reprogram compact Canon cameras to do periodic capture. You might find something useful in the "space" projects where individuals pack a camera and phone under a weather balloon and send it a few thousand feet up. None of these projects are aimed at continuous capture however, they are expecting to record events over hours rather than days.

 

[BCBEE]

Buy a cheap in car video camera for 20 quid off eBay. This can be left running for 2_3 hrs with an sd card in and will give you 15 min slots or video. You can then put in the car in case you have or see an accident so it serves two uses. Runs off its own battery so no wiring