Eric Jennings

Nick Kitchener wrote:Maybe our bee experts on the forum can better inform you but here are some links.

Bees and cellular signals:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/07/Honeybees-Face-Towering-Threat-From-Cell-Phones.aspx
http://www.fastcompany.com/1752894/are-cell-phones-killing-bees-updated

Bees and cordless phones:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ratcliffe/would-you-give-up-wireless-services-to-save-the-bees-how-about-to-save-money/283

And there is this very interesting research not on RF radiation and bees, but on the discovery that bees use very sensitive electrical field detectors to communicate with flowers:
http://eartheasy.com/blog/2013/03/bees-guided-by-flowers-electric-fields/

Thanks Nick, that's super helpful.

I found the original paper here: Favre Study

Has no other studies been done since 2009? I'm also interested in how similar the effect of the 900MHz/1800MHz cellular data frequency would be to the 2.4GHz that we're using with Pinoccio.

Also, I wish I kept bees, because I'd love to reproduce Daniel's experiment. I'm curious as to the choice to have the radio play into the phone, as that seems to be adding additional variables to the experiment.

Sally's husband is a PhD student at the University of Michigan in biology. It'd be great to get some experiments going with devices within the 2.4GHz spectrum and their effect on hives (WiFi, Pinoccios, Bluetooth.)

Very interesting! Thanks for posting!

Ryan Barrett wrote:

Eric Jennings wrote:Another idea is to place the standalone sensors all over your property, and then mount a data-collection Pinoccio on your vehicle and just drive around the property. When your data-collection Pinoccio gets within range of the sensors, they'll start streaming their data log to you. Then you don't have to get out of the car.

OH! I like that.... And it really sounds like a solid way to go.

A big benefit of mesh networking is that it lets you approach problems in a lot of different ways.

I could see a device on your dashboard that, when it gets in range, initiates a "get datalog from sensor" message. Once the log is completely captured, the onboard RGB LED would blink green three times, alerting you that the transfer is completed and you can continue.

Or attach a Pinoccio to one of the 3DRobotics UAVs and program it with GPS waypoints to automatically fly over the property and gather the data.

Nick Kitchener wrote:Hi Eric, nice to meet you!

Nice to meet you too!

Nick Kitchener wrote:So, what is you and your wife's take on wireless / RF and bees? I read some rather disturbing studies recently, especially concerning certain frequencies (like the cellular network).

Well, my wife and I aren't doing bees at our home. Sally, my cofounder, does keep bees in her backyard. I can't speak to the pros/cons of RF frequencies and bees, as I haven't heard a thing about it. It would certainly be of interest to us though if you have links to the research for us to take a look? (There are specifics of RF that would be important to know about--both in the frequency in which it occurs, and the power at which it is transmitted.)

Ryan Barrett wrote:I love the power saving features of the Pinoccio! That was one of my biggest obstacles with the design I was working on. I'll certainly be watching for the retail release.

Thanks! We spent a lot of time to get the power usage extremely low. We haven't published this publicly yet, but the battery life is actually even better than on our Tech Specs page--up to seven years on a single charge if the board wakes up once per hour, and it's on for 50ms or less for each duty cycle. At that point, the battery itself will drain faster than the board will draw.

Ryan Barrett wrote:So here is the big question for wireless, What kind of distance between nodes would we be looking at?

Well, since we're using 2.4GHz, we're limited to around 100 meters line-of-sight. This isn't great for long-distance wireless mesh.

Ryan Barrett wrote:I'm seriously shying away from wireless just because we'd have to cover 9 million square feet with a signal. That's a lot of square feet. From my knowledge we'd have to use something like 802.11a and we'd need something like 55 meshed nodes to cover the 200 acres (not accounting for terrain).
I'd think there would be significant cost in buying tech that could accomplish that.

Yeah, that's quite a piece of property you're talking about! We considered looking into the 900MHz radios which give longer range, but that range is regulated differently in different countries, so we settled on 2.4GHz since it's unregulated worldwide.

Ryan Barrett wrote:Where as an SD card and some feet once a week/month are relatively inexpensive

An idea would be to find the various areas of the property that need monitoring, and then position sensors there. Pinoccio's mesh networking stack does allow routing between nodes to extend range. So if you had Pinoccio A one hundred meters away from Pinoccio B, and Pinoccio B was another 100 meters away from Pinoccio C, Pinoccio B will route messages between A and C.

How far you can extend this route is limited, but our estimate is that if you have fairly infrequent updates (~10 minutes or so), 10 or so hops shouldn't be a problem. That also lets you route around terrain or obstacles by simply placing Pinoccios nearby.

Another idea is to place the standalone sensors all over your property, and then mount a data-collection Pinoccio on your vehicle and just drive around the property. When your data-collection Pinoccio gets within range of the sensors, they'll start streaming their data log to you. Then you don't have to get out of the car.

Nick Kitchener wrote:Oooooooh:
http://player.vimeo.com/video/57180127?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=62acd0

http://pinocc.io/

Hi there, I'm Eric, co-founder of Pinoccio. Very happy to see you found our little project! I'm a budding permaculture nut myself, as my wife and I slowly transform our small backyard into a much more balanced micro ecosystem. Sally, my co-founder and the one drawing in the video, is also a bee-keeper, so we both definitely vibe with most of you on this forum.

We have a half-dozen "backpacks", or small sensor boards, that can plug into Pinoccios--and several of those are specifically around tracking environmental data. Sally is asking for a microphone-based backpack to let her know when the bees start to swarm (when their collective volume gets louder), so she can go check it out.

Let us know if we can answer any questions!

- Eric @ Pinoccio