Anyone know of any gadgets that I can use that would log and record temps in a hive, then go out and retrieve a memory card and download the data? Maybe even a wireless transmission type. First year beek and am just real curious, I like to watch things progress and data.
There are lots of wireless thermometers that would work, but recording is a different animal.
I am a bit shy about putting wireless stuff around the bees personally as who knows what delicate electrical stuff is going on in their bodies.
I get headaches from wifi so it is off in our house. Cellphones also give me headaches.
However I am interested in this topic. I would also like weight monitoring devices and started a topic on that. Temperature is a very important part of the equation. It would also be useful to have temps recorded in different places in the hive.
You could put together an entire monitor with an arduino or raspberry pi. Temp, humidity, wireless, logging, etc. all fairly cheaply and compactly.
You can easily do temperature and humidity with an arduino and a datalogger shield. It will store right on an SD card. With a little extra work (and $$) you could go wireless. If the hives are close enough, you could also run an ethernet cable to the arduino and capture the data from a remote (inside) pc
Ya, what he said.....;)
Thanks guys! I have a youth friend at church and I asked him about the products you mentioned and he lit up like a Christmas Tree! He said he just got done covering both those products in school and built a temp/humidity recorder as his class project! So he is going to set me up with hourly snap shots of two hives on a SD card already in spreadsheet format for $110.00 bucks! Thanks again for the insight guys! Plan on putting these in buy October and hopefully get data from LIVING bees all winter!