Hi there, I'm completely new on Arduino, but I have a project to weigh a bee Hive at distance, and get some weather infos. not because I will not visit my hives often, but because they are in different location and sometimes avoiding transport save money if you can monitor what is going on on the hive site.
It's quite easy, and complicate at same time, but it's quite a challenge for me and I found (yes I'm searching before asking) already some "module" but never altogether for my project. I'm a mechanical technician, I have some electric skill, and electronic base, also some C language knowledge, but I'm not strong enough to develop my self, or better it will take too much time and I'm not sure to be able to debug anything.
My project is as follow :
To weigh something at distance a hive (from 20 to 80 kilos / 40 to 160lbs), with resisive device ( wheatstone) from a home balance (possible to use a deformation sensor too, but the objet to scale is 300*400mm (11 * 15 "). No precision needed it's to follow evolution of the weight so no reset at each weighing, only the difference+/- is interesting
Get temperature with a sensor (no precison 0,5° is ok)
Get waterfall indication
I need to get those infos 2 times a day, at 9am, and 18pm, it could be god to get it automatically, but if I need to send an sms to get the infos, it's ok too.
All infos must be send by a GSM module with a Sim card reader (subscription required). SO as per above mention by inquiry (Sms, phone call) or automatically.
In a second time an application with GPRS system and web server could be develop as user interface.
On environnement side, I need to find a way to know power consumption and life time of a battery to determine what power supply I can get, lead battery sealed, or solar panel for battery filling (may be control also by the arduino but let's get simple)
all devices will be outside may be in a stainless steel box, or a plexiglass box water sealed , temperature range from -30 to 50°c)
I want to know what could be the cost of hardware, software developpement (including web interface in option or for later treatment) and potential fee for such a project, anyone could help me ?
It's to reduce travel expense on my side for a hobby so no problem to invest I'm sure I will get ROI quick due to my gas budget !!
At end I will need about 5 devices.
thanks in advance for interest !