Adding temperature and humidity sensors to my beehive.

First, as an update to my previous post, I haven't dismantled the less prosperous hive yet.  The weather in the eastern US hasn't been good for that kind of thing lately.

Because the weather hasn't been good, I've decided to begin working on an idea I had to implant an array of temperature and humidity sensors in my beehive to collect data on environmental fluctuations in the hive.  The two figures below show the positioning of each sensor group as well as the microcontrol unit(s).  A Raspberry Pi will also be used to compile and periodically transmit the data back to my server.  I know the Raspberry Pi is probably overkill, but it's fun.

The planned arrangement of the sensors on my hive as it might appear from the outside. 

A cross section of the top bar hive with sensors installed.  For this experiment, I'm placing the bulk of the sensor circuitry on the outside to minimize its intrusion on the bees and make servicing easier

These days it seems that sensors are moving more towards being fully functioning modules than simple electronic components.  With the older simpler sensor components, you often have to build supporting circuitry to power the sensing element and connect it to the rest of your project.  Depending on your knowledge of that particular sensor and the amount of supporting components you need, integrating such a component could take quite a bit of time.  The module solutions, on the other hand, are much easier to use because you often only need to connect them to your microcontroller, upload a program, and watch your data come streaming in.  I have no objections to using the module solutions, but it does tend to raise the price a bit.  Consequently, in most of my projects, as with this one, I end up only halfway incorporating module solutions in my effort to try to find a balance between how much money I'm willing to spend vs how much time I'm willing to divert towards building basic circuits.

For this project, I've decide to go with an NPX Semiconductor SA56004FDP for temperature sensing and the Honeywell HCH-1000-002.  Although the  parameters of both products appear to exceed the requirements of this project, they differ greatly in the ease with which I will be able to use them.  While the SA56004FDP is programmable with both i2c and 2 wire output options (and, therefore, easier to use), the HCH-1000-002 is simply a really nice capacitor that will vary its capacitance depending on humidity and will require additional work to integrate it with my MPU.

Fortunately, a quick search of the internet has found that someone has already done much of the work for me and posted instructions!  Someone named Carl Morey posted detailed information at http://sourceforge.net/projects/arduinoweather/files/ on how to build an "Arduino weather station." These weather station plans include instructions and schematics for circuitry incorporating an HCH-1000.  Brilliant!

More later.