The tall brick building on the left is the Museum of Natural History, directly West of the Valarm installation. To deal with the deep afternoon shade, we installed two 10-watt mono-crystalline solar panels on the top of these cast-iron hummingbird feeders. The Valarm sensor pagoda and bee hotel are visible in the background to the right.

“Working with Valarm has been a real pleasure. We’re facing the challenges of sensor deployment in publicly-accessible urban settings. The small size of the Valarm systems has allowed us to put them in places that would be impossible for larger, more visible systems. The easy availability of both WiFi and cellphone connectivity for the data let us pick sites without having to worry about stringing wires or having to be near a building. Most importantly, the Valarm staff have been incredibly helpful and innovative in getting us the data we need. We’re really excited to partner with Valarm to push urban environmental sensing projects beyond what could be done in the past.”

– Dean Pentcheff, BioSCAN Project Coordinator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

How do you assess biodiversity while learning about the environments and behavior of insects and bees?

Deploy Industrial IoT sensor monitoring systems to remotely monitor the micro-climate at bee hotels!

The goal of this project is to assess biodiversity in local leafcutter bees (Megachile) and bee nest cell construction. Three Valarm units were deployed around Los Angeles, California, to help this research:

• Pleisteocene Garden in Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits near Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
• Edible Garden at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum (NHM)
• 1913 Garden at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum (NHM)

Every 15 minutes the Valarm units collected 3 weather factors: temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure using the Valarm Pro app installed on a Sony ST25 phone and a Yocto-Meteo sensor. All of the data was uploaded in real-time via WiFi or 3G/4G cell networks to Tools.Valarm.net for secure IoT mapping, visualization, graphing, analysis, exporting, and data download.

Here are some further details for each study site:

1. Bee hotel for Megachile solitary leafcutter bees
2. Remote environmental monitoring box (you can use Industrial IoT sensor hubs and sensors from Shop.Valarm.net)
3. Sensor pagoda (a.k.a. Stevenson screen) with USB weather sensor
4. 10W of power, or more, from solar panels

Graph of the humidity at the 3 different study locations from Tools.Valarm.net

A bee hotel was deployed at each of the locations where Tools.Valarm.net monitors the micro-climate. This is an Industrial IoT sensor monitoring system in a fig tree at the Edible Garden of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum.

Solar panels placed on the pole give power to the monitoring system and weather sensor deployed inside the fig tree. (Look closely inside the tree in picture above)

Inside a remote environmental monitoring box: IoT sensor hub or Valarm Pro app installed on a phone, meteo weather sensor, Lithium-Polymer battery, solar power charge controller. [Deployment in Pleistocene garden at the Page Museum in Los Angeles, California]

What monitoring system? The box above is now hidden under leaves and rocks, pretty much invisible!

Solar panels installed to power the remote environmental monitoring unit in the Pleistocene Garden at the Page Museum, La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California.

Valarm box deployment in the 1913 Garden at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. Bee hotel and weather sensor (temperature, humidity, barometric pressure) pagoda in the foreground and solar panels on hummingbird feeders in the background. Valarm-equipped phone in a box hidden inside the bushes.

You can note that in the pictures we’ve deployed Industrial IoT monitoring systems to be as unobtrusive as possible.

Each of the remote environmental monitoring boxes was spray-painted green and brown to blend in with the natural environment. The sensor pagodas were also colored in order to minimize visual impact. This can be a challenging part of the deployment for remote environmental monitors but we feel it is an important factor to consider.

This is a collaborative research project with the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits, the Entomology Department at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, and the BioSCAN biodiversity project. It is another intriguing use case of Valarm in the field. We are always excited to hear about the many ways in which people apply Valarm technology, and enjoy helping out in any way we can.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at Info@Valarm.net if you’ve got any questions.

How can you, your teams, and your organization save time, money, and lives with Industrial IoT monitoring systems?

Have a gander at our Industrial IoT Customer Success Stories and Web Dashboards to see how businesses, government agencies, and organizations save time, money, and lives with Tools.Valarm.net.

You’ll see how Tools.Valarm.net effectively monitors anything, like Smart Water IoT systems, flood warning systems, flow meters, and water wells to help you manage water resources.