Though we had a brief look at their specs earlier, there are a few aspects we’ll have to look for before you can actually decide which SBC is the more compatible one for your needs! Pricing Respective Differences between Raspberry Pi 4 and BeagleBone® Boards Micro-AB USB 2.0 client port, Type-A USB 2.0 host port, 1 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, 2 x Grove ConnectorsĤx USB2.0 host, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz and Bluetooth 4.1 LE, 2 x Grove ConnectorsĢ x USB2.0 Host, Ethernet 10/100M Bit and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz and Bluetooth 4.1 LEĤGB on-board storage using eMMC, microSD card slot Specs comparison: Raspberry Pi 4 vs BeagleBone® Boards Specsīroadcom BCM2711, Quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC 1.5GHzġGB, 2GB or 4GB LPDDR4 (Depending on model)Ģ USB 3.0 ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz IEEE 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 5.0, BLEġ USB Host, 1 Mini-USB Client, 1 10/100 Mbps Ethernet With that said, let’s look at their individual specifications! The tutorials are based on Python and mraa/upm library. Glyn tells us we could set up a basic monitor using Raspberry Pi, a DS28B20 temperature sensor, a battery pack, and a solar panel.Through the Seeed wiki page, we offer step-by-step tutorials for beginners to familiarize themselves with Grove modules and start building out their prototypes with the Seeed Studio BeagleBone® Green Wireless. “That was one of Raspberry Pi’s greatest assets and what attracted me to the platform, as well as the competitive price point!” The whole setup cost him about £50. He chose it because of the community behind the hardware. Running costs are negligible: “Raspberry Pi is perfect for getting projects like this up and running quickly and reliably using very little power,” says Glyn. The system has been running for eight years with minimal intervention and is powered by an old car battery and a small solar PV panel. “It used a lot of power and the bees didn’t like it – they kept covering the sensor in wax! Oddly, the bees don’t seem to mind the DS218B20 temperature sensor, presumably since it’s a round metal object compared to the plastic grille of the DHT22,” notes Glyn. He also decided to drop the DHT22 humidity sensor. “This is when Raspberry Pi came into its own,” he says. This would enable him to view live beehive data from anywhere and also allow other people to engage in the data. Sensor-y overloadĪlmost as soon as BeeMonitor was running successfully, Glyn realised he wanted to make the data live on the internet. “This was very time-consuming but did result in some interesting data,” he says. In his initial setup, Glyn also had to extract and analyse the CSV data himself. Data from these was saved to an SD card, the obvious drawback being that this didn’t display real-time data readings. These were received by a Raspberry Pi connected to the internet.Īt first, there was both a DS18B20 temperature sensor and a DHT22 humidity sensor inside the beehive, along with the Arduino (setup info can be found here). The hives were too far from the house for WiFi to reach, so Glyn used a low-power RF sensor connected to an Arduino which was placed inside the hive to take readings. Open-source software developed for the OpenEnergyMonitor project provides a data-logging and graphing platform that can be viewed online. Glyn built most of the parts for BeeMonitor himself. Maintaining this temperature when a brood is present is a key indicator of colony health.” Wi-Fi not spotīeeMonitor has been tracking the hives’ population since 2012 and is one of the earliest examples of a Raspberry Pi project. They maintain a 34∞C core brood temperature (± 0.5∞C) even when the ambient temperature drops below freezing. “Bees need all the help and love they can get at the moment and without them pollinating our plants, weíd struggle to grow crops.
“The aim of the project was to put together a system to monitor the health of a bee colony by monitoring the temperature and humidity inside and outside the hive over multiple years,” explains Glyn. With access to several hives at his keen apiarist parents’ garden in Snowdonia, Glyn set up BeeMonitor using some of the tools he used at work to track the beehives’ inhabitants. Glyn Hudson has always enjoyed making things and set up a company manufacturing open-source energy monitoring tools shortly after graduating from university. Getting to design and build things for a living sounds like a dream job, especially if it also involves Raspberry Pi and wildlife. Keeping an eye on bee life cycles is a brilliant example of how Raspberry Pi sensors help us understand the world around us.