One of our first own projects was a bee IoT tracker called aproneX. The vision behind it: To use bees as biosensors to monitor nature and environmental pollution.
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The first step was to validate various ideas. In this phase, we specifically looked for industries in which artificial intelligence (AI) was not yet so widespread. Agriculture seemed exciting. But we had to dive deeper. There were already intelligent drones for irrigation and monitoring.
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We got involved with some research groups that were looking at using bees as “biosensors” to monitor biodiversity and pollution in the environment. The idea was exciting, and so we found our potential target industry in beekeeping. The basic concept: bees fly in a radius of up to 5 km around their hive and collect pollen. Once the pollen is collected, the bees return to their colony. A camera monitors the entrance to the hive. It records images of the bees flying in. An AI analyzes the images to find out what pollen or contamination is present. The quantity of up to 50 thousand bees per hive is sufficient to collect valid data and draw conclusions about the environment. We had found our vision, but the question was:
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On the one hand, we liked the idea of bees as biosensors, as it represented a technical challenge and could contribute directly to environmental protection. On the other hand, we already had a certain hands-on mentality at the time. So we decided to start by building the infrastructure for the biosensor vision. The idea behind it was to build useful tools for beekeepers to bring our technology to as many hives as possible. This allowed us to pursue the idea of biosensors step by step and create a foundation first.
Enough planning. It was time to get into action. We talked to the target group to identify their biggest problems. We contacted dozens of beekeepers and got many responses. One thing that many beekeepers mentioned was a more affordable hive scale. With this feedback, we decided to contact a well-known beekeeper and build a hive-sized prototype. An electrical engineer friend helped us create an MVP in just a few days. It consisted of a wooden board from the DIY store, a load cell, a Raspberry Pi, a power bank and a simple web app. But instead of positioning ourselves with a cheaper beehive scale, we tackled a bigger problem: Bee theft. The beehive scale became a theft tracker that was particularly well tailored to the needs of beekeepers. All the components were together, and so the aproneX project was born.
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