FiWare

BeeZon

BeeZon was founded in 2015, and is a Greek company that intends to bring the power of Internet of Things in real life, agriculture and especially beekeeping. All company members have more than ten years experience in software, hardware development, and business administration. Their passion and  environmental consciousness allowed BeeZon to create strong products that appeal to the needs of both the era and the market. Despite the short presence of the company, BeeZon managed to make an impact in business, and was voted the “Startups’ Startup” in the 2nd FIWARE startup Bootcamp.

Being environmentally aware and passionate with bees, BeeZon explored the difference that could be made through technology and IoT in Apiculture. The Climate Change, including high temperatures, over winter periods and intense rainfalls, has affected the entire ecosystem and especially beekeeping: The timing of nectar-flows is unstable, and the natural resources are scarce. The bees are starving, or dying, and the professional beekeepers loose populations and production. Most professionals, in order to sustain their business, are forced to practice migratory beekeeping, hunting nectar flows across large geographical areas based on nothing but past experiences. But this choice comes with much cost in terms of manpower, transportations, poor supervision ability, and losses of colonies.
By practicing beekeeping, the members of BeeZon shared the same needs and concerns with the beekeepers and therefore were able to identify a solution. What was created was a Virtual Bee Consultant to gather real time data in a continuous way, providing remote monitoring and control over the following aspects:

•    Time management of nectar flows
•    Insight of colony status, colony dynamics and colony hygiene
•    Inspection of queenless and swarming states
•    Food storage reserves’ management
•    Antitheft mechanism and tracking system
•    Notification system tailor made by the user

Goals and challenges

The creation of the Virtual Bee Consultant was proven to be a very challenging task. It was involving setting up an RF communication network of sensors that when deployed in hives would collect data in a continuous way. The data would be gathered and transformed in a system’s gateway, and then communicated to a context management platform via internet. The consultant’s platform would receive the data, manage them, and publish the appropriate info to subscribers (web/mobile applications). The end-user application would be notified whenever changes occur on the context, based on scenarios and materialized thresholds. Moreover, an anti-theft mechanism would be employed in order to minimize the impact of thievery in colony loses.

The challenges that were faced were both related to project aspects and to macro-economic conditions. The project related issues were resolved through hard work and agile development processes. The economic conditions though, and more specifically the capital controls that were imposed during 2015 in Greece, were proven to be a very tough opponent, creating delays in resources supply, and as a result in the project’s plan.

The choice of FIWARE

The founders of BeeZon realized that in order to develop further an acceleration program would be of immense value. Such a program would offer funding, networking and mentoring services.  FRACTALS  – FIWARE acceleration program, was strategically selected since it provided all the aforementioned criteria along with an open technology ecosystem. The offered tools proved to be most helpful in the development of the BeeZon platform, the no equity funding was of great importance for a startup, and the wide European network of companies taking part in this program could potentially offer strategic alliances.

The use of FIWARE technology

BeeZon software integrates FiWARE technologies, cloud services and wireless sensor capabilities. A network of wireless sensors is deployed on an area of beekeeping interest, measuring both colony and environmental variables and transmitting them for further analysis to the Beezon platform via internet. Sensor data are dispatched to Backend Device Management, delivered to Orion Context Broker, processed and analyzed by Complex Event  Processing GE and published to subscribers.

BeeZon software uses the following Generic Enablers
•    Backend Device Management
•    Publish/Subscribe Context  Broker  – Orion Broker GE
•    Complex Event Processing GE
•    KeyRock identity management, for authenticating functions.
BeeZon’s continuous monitoring system brings the power of Internet of Things into the area of beekeeping, following precision apiculture methodologies. Beekeepers need to have an insight of the colony’s status and dynamics in order to increase productivity and decrease operational costs.

Benefits and accomplishments

The overall involvement with FIWARE was quite beneficial for the BeeZon team in the following aspects:

•    FI-Business services has been a valuable mean for continuous improvement in several business topics through workshops, seminars, investor pitching, and coaching sessions.
•    The team’s interaction with FIWARE community, both for technical and business aspects, contributed in team’s skills’ enrichment and greater exposure.
•    The Knowledge acquired in FIWARE technologies is certainly an asset for the company which can be used in future projects.
•    Our participation to a wide European network such as the FIWARE ecosystem has given to the team the opportunity to be exposed to a very diversified audience consisted of promising startups, top industry professionals, leading experts, successful entrepreneurs and international investors, ensuring the company’s future growth.