It is not a question of technology. It is a question of where your bees are and how often you go there.
A Bluetooth scale stores data in memory and you read it with your phone when you come to the apiary. You just stop by, watch the bees and in a few seconds you have the latest data on your phone. No SIM card, no monthly costs, battery life for the whole season. If your hives are next to your house or garden, or in a place you visit regularly, Bluetooth is the simpler and cheaper solution. The data is always fresh because you are there.
If the hives are far away, in the forest, at a mountain site, an hour's drive from home, the situation changes. A Bluetooth scale measures just as accurately there, but you only see the data when you arrive. The bhBase GSM gateway sends the data automatically at a configured interval without your presence. In the evening you look at the graph and know what happened during the day without going anywhere.
With a larger number of hives at one site, you do not need one GSM gateway per hive. One bhBase can serve up to ten scales. GSM transfer costs are therefore shared across the whole site.
A simple rule of thumb: if you can get to the site at least once a week, Bluetooth is enough. If not, or if you want to know what is happening right now, GSM makes sense.
| bhScale (Bluetooth) | bhScale + bhBase (GSM) | |
|---|---|---|
| Hives near home / regular visits | ✓ | possible, but unnecessary |
| Remote site | ✓ measures, but data only at the visit | ✓ data without a visit |
| Immediate alert on change | — | ✓ (BA + bhBase) |
| SIM card and monthly costs | no | yes |
| Battery life | ~1 year | bhBase ~3 months |