LoRa based Beehive Monitoring System

Parts List

• PC
• Raspberry Pi 3B (base station, data server)
• ESP32 with LoRa (TTGO) , one for the base station, one for each sensor node
• Sensors (e.g. scale HX711, temperature, humidity)
• LiFePo4-type batteries provide the voltage for the ESP32 sensor nodes, without the need for regulators

Software

PC: Remote Desktop for connecting to the Desktop of the Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi:

• Python script for data acquisition https://github.com/TomNaiser/LoRa-Sensor-Monitoring/blob/master/LoRaSensorMonitoringServer.py
• kst2 for data plotting. Great for real-time large-data visualization of sensor data. The python data acquisition script adds the data to end of a growing csv file, which is used as data source of kst2.

ESP32 receiver (attached to Raspberry Pi): Receive data via LoRa from multiple sensor nodes and send the data via serial (USB) to the Raspberry Pi (or PC). https://github.com/TomNaiser/LoRa-Sensor-Monitoring/blob/master/LoraToSerialInterfaceV4.ino

ESP32 sensor node: https://github.com/TomNaiser/LoRa-Sensor-Monitoring/blob/master/LoraSenderDSleepV5.ino

HX711 based weight acquisition. For long battery life the ESP32 goes into Deep Sleep Mode until the next measurement is scheduled.

Setup

Setup the Raspberry Pi

(Re-)installation of Raspbian:

download balena-Etcher (used for writing the image to a SD-card) to PC

download Raspbian-image

selected the zipped imageFile in balena-Etcher

select your SD-Card and write the image

Install SD in the Raspberry Pi and install Raspbian

setup Remote-Desktop:

sudo apt-get purge realvnc-vnc-server

sudo apt-get install xrdp

sudo apt-get install spyder3

sudo apt-get install kst

setup python script autostart:

sudo crontab -e

open with nano

enter the following line at the end:

@reboot python /home/pi/PythonCodes/LoRaSensorMonitoringServer.py

Setup the ESP32

Load the Arduino projects and flash to ESP32