The Bee Counter - The Concept

What is the bee counter?

The bee counter is going to be the most complex sensors in this project.  The idea is that i will be using it to count bees in and out of the hive.  

The bee counter will sit in front of the entrance to the beehive and will be made up of 20 gaps, each gap will be small enough that only 1 bee can pass through at a time in 1 direction, i can then record that a bee was entering or leaving the hive using the sensors.  I have taken the idea from an link i found when searching through google while trying to work out how to count bees.

How will it work?

It will be made up of at least 40 phototransistors and these will be used in pairs.  In simple terms the phototransistor will register when something travels past the sensor and reflects the light emitted into a receiver.

The pairs will be placed in between two blocks allowing only a single bee to pass through at a time, the direction that the bee is travelling will be determined by the order in which the photo transistors are triggered.  There are some diagrams below that show this better, the black blocks represent the phototransistors.

Lets assume that the sensor on the outer edge is number 1 and the sensor on the inside edge is number 2, if the sensors are triggered 1 then 2 the bee is travelling into the hive, if it is 2 then 1 it is leaving the hive, well that's the theory anyway.

I plan to build these as 4 units, each with 5 gates, this will simplify the project, keeping it in manageable chunks, while also make it easier to diagnose and swap out faulty components, should the need occur.

My Initial Sketches

My Sketches Drawn up in Google Sketchup

Single Unit

4 Units Side by Side

The Next Steps For the Bee Counter.

Now that i have the idea and direction, I have ordered the relevant components, once they arrive I will start to create the circuits on a breadboard and hook them up to the raspberry pi so that i can see how they work.  I am not an expert with circuits, I remember playing with them at school and get the concept, but it's been a few years, so if I struggle i may call in favours from friends that are better at it that me.

Initially I plan to workout the bugs on a small scale using just 2 phototransistors, once i understand how to read the data from the sensors i will then build out 1 of the 4 units on the breadboard and then test that.  Finally once I am happy that what i have built works I will turn that circuit layout from the breadboard into a proper circuit board, I am hoping to use a piece of software I have been told about called Fritzing to make that easier, from what I have been told it allows me to draw out what i have built on the breadboard and will turn that into a proper circuit board diagram that i can then send off to have made properly.