Goal and Purpose
The purpose of our project is to design and build a weight scale to be used by beekeepers to monitor the honey production of their beehives. The scale should be relatively easy to implement and require minimal hardware to maximize its accessibility for the average beekeeper.
Our project is split into two parts: software and hardware. Our software consists of Raspberry Pi Python code, while our hardware requires soldering, 3D printing cases, wiring, and setting up our device when testing it on the beehive. Currently, we have three people on our team: Guangyang’s main focus is on the hardware, and Ethan’s focus is on the software. Victor helps with either part as needed.
How it works
The software of our weight scale reads data with the help of an HX711 chip through a Raspberry Pi. The HX711 is connected to the load cells and converts their voltage differentials into digital values that are then sent to the Pi. Currently, our program draws from existing code on the internet and is capable of reading weight values over a repeated time interval, as well as writing those values to a generated CSV file along with a timestamp. One of our current goals is to reliably convert these values into kilogram units, as well as implement a calibrate function that runs whenever the scale is powered on.
For new members:
For new incoming people, it will be an advantage if they already have some experience with Raspberry Pi Pico/3 and basic embedded systems programming. In the future, we might need someone who is experienced in data science to process the weight data, but that’s not our main priority at the moment.