Firmware overview#

There are different firmwares for different flavours of appliances, both in terms of sensor coverage, and telemetry capabilities. We are enumerating both firmwares from our own pen, and from other open source projects.

Groups#

This section enumerates and groups firmwares by origin, chronologically sorted in the order of appearance.

Mois Labs#

Collecting beehive sensor data since 2011. With the first »Hello, world« post in November 2011, and the most recent one in May 2023, you can see that Markus is surely one of the most avid and proficient data collectors, and inspired many others to start similar projects.

See also

He published many articles about his journey, and it is a pleasure to read all about the development progress in the bienenwaage and bienenwaage2 sections on his personal blog.

Mois Labs Beescale Yún

Running the Mois Box, transmitting sensor data over HTTP, using the Bridge Library for Yún devices.

Date: 2011 Source: beescale-yun.ino

eth wifi mqtt http json

ads1231 ds18b20 sht30 tsl2591

ATmega328 arm

Open Hive#

All systems conceived by Open Hive. Clemens Gruber reports about the development progress on his personal site at http://open-hive.org/. He pioneered low-cost scale platform designs based on aluminium bars.

GSM, Wi-Fi#

Open Hive GSM / Wi-Fi sensor node

Firmware powering the Open Hive Bee Scale GSM, using a GPRSbee GSM modem, and the Open Hive WiFi Solar, based on an ESP8266.

Date: 2014 Source: openhive-gsm-wifi.ino

gsm wifi http csv

hx711 ads1231 ds18b20 dht22

ATmega328 esp8266

low-power

Firmwares for load cell adjustment

Use these firmwares for adjusting the scale / load cell unit.

Date: 2016 Source: scale-adjust-hx711.ino, scale-adjust-ads1231.ino

hx711 ads1231

ATmega328 esp8266 esp32 cortex-m

ISM RF packet radio#

Open Hive JeeLink radio gateway

Receive sensor data over radio and forward it to the UART interface suitable for further downstreaming to MQTT, using the beradio-python gateway.

Date: 2014 Source: rfm69-gateway-uart.ino

rf69 uart csv

ATmega328

Open Hive Arduino Yún gateway

Receive sensor data over radio and store it onto an SD card on an Arduino Yún.

Date: 2015 Source: rfm69-gateway-sdcard.ino

rf69 sdcard csv

ATmega328

Open Hive RFM69 sensor node

Collect sensor data, encode it to [CSV], and send it using an RFM69 radio module.

Date: 2015 Source: rfm69-node.ino

rf69 csv

ads1231 ds18b20 dht22

ATmega328

LoRa, LoRaWAN#

Todo

  • Are there any Open Hive LoRa/LoRaWAN firmwares available already?

Backdoor#

Those firmwares have been conceived by members of the [Backdoor collective].

Note

No worries, it is not about breaking into systems, it is only the name of a collective.

ISM RF sensor and gateway nodes using BERadio

The sensor device will acquire measurement readings, and emit messages encoded with BERadio protocol for ISM radio telemetry. The gateway device receives it, and forwards it to the UART interface of the gateway machine.

Note

beradio-python will read this data, decodes the BERadio protocol, and publishes the decoded data to an MQTT bus topic. Hiveeyes One is running this firmware since February 2016.

Date: 2014 Source: node-rfm69-beradio.ino, gateway-rfm69-beradio.ino

rf69 beradio mqtt

hx711 ds18b20 dht22

ATmega328

low-power

multihop firmware

A flexible software breadboard for ISM RF packet radio nodes, relays, and gateways.

Date: 2015 Source: multihop.ino

rf69 rf96 lora beradio

hx711 ds18b20 dht22

ATmega328

low-power

Wi-Fi sensor node

An educational/testing firmware powering the Open Hive Adafruit Feather HUZZAH, transmitting sensor data using MQTT over Wi-Fi.

Date: 2016 Source: node-wifi-mqtt.ino

wifi mqtt json

hx711 ads1231 ds18b20 dht22

esp8266

educational

Hiveeyes Pipa Datalogger

A playground for building a generic C++ datalogger framework.

Date: 2017 Source: pipa-espressif.ino

wifi gsm mqtt http json csv urlencoded

esp8266 esp32 esp32s2

pre-alpha

Homie-based#

wifi mqtt json

hx711 ds18b20

esp8266

wifi mqtt json

hx711 ds18b20

esp8266

low-power

Ringlabs#

Bienenwaage 2.0 NodeMCU

A beehive monitoring sensor node based on the NodeMCU hardware, using an ESP8266 MCU. Telemetry data is transmitted using MQTT over Wi-Fi or GSM.

Date: 2019 Source: bienenwaage-esp8266.ino

wifi gsm mqtt

hx711 ds18b20

esp8266

low-power

Bienenwaage 5.0 TTGO T-Call

A beehive monitoring sensor node based on the TTGO T-Call board, featuring an ESP32 MCU. Telemetry data is transmitted using MQTT over Wi-Fi or GSM.

Date: 2019 Source: bienenwaage-esp32.cpp

wifi gsm mqtt

hx711 ds18b20

esp32

low-power