Here's the plan. I want to measure the temperature in beehives in 2-3 different places. There's no mains power. A UK beehive is 46x46cm. my assumptions are: I can buy temperature guages that are accurate enough that output data I could try and figure out writing device drivers for them into unix a Raspberry Pi could do all the smarts and write out to a USB drive solar panels on the beehive roof could power it. There are very specific circumstance when I'd want data logged every 5 minutes or so, otherwise every hour or more would be fine. Aside from powering the thing it doesn't seem that hard to do apart from me figuring out how to write software at a level I've never had to consider before but can solar in this precipitous shithole work to power something like a Pi?
Any device running Unix is so overkill for a temp logger it makes embedded folks like me cry. And laugh. And cry some more. How about some battery powered things like this: http://www.microdaq.com/data-logger/temperature/1.php (But you don't get to write drivers!)
Trust me, I don't want to write drivers. Some of those things might well do what I want and save all the shenanigans, ultimately what I want is the data. I shall do some reading.
it had somewhat dawned on me that 10 years ago I'd have probably had to write a device driver. 20 years ago I'd have had to have built the the temperature sensor and X-pav would have been excited to help me. In 2012 he just links me to the site of simple stuff that someone did and outsourced the production to china a few years ago and I'll chisel a bit of wood out of the roof to make it fit.
Don't get me wrong, if you find something interesting and you want to learn stuff, go for it. At this point in my career and life though, a lot of it becomes "buy" vs "build", and there's so much good cheap stuff you can buy that building should be reserved for the real meat of the thing (or if you want to do it as a hobby). My time is not cheap, and yours might not be either.
You and me both. I'm sort of relieved that its all out there in some respects. Just a little flat that I thought I had something that on a forum like this one would be an interesting project and within half an hour here's a link to Gadgets that probably do all the stuff I had in mind
Passing through Chicao's O'Hare I saw it claim to be the only airport in the world with an onsite apiary...
