The Onibi™ Base
The future of bee care.
The most comprehensive, sensor-rich hive base. Built to turn any traditional hive into a precision monitoring system.
Project type
Services
We conceived, together with the Beefutures team, the Onibi™ Base and Onibi™ Watch as a unified system designed to make hive activity and environmental signals visible and actionable. Together, they transform a traditional hive into a connected observation platform combining embedded sensing, visual monitoring, and real-time insights.
Our aim was to create a coherent ecosystem where hardware, software, and data work together to support a deeper understanding of colony life.
The Challenge
One of the core challenges was designing around living organisms. Working with bees means dealing with sensitivity, unpredictability, and behaviours that cannot be disturbed.
At the same time, the products had to operate outdoors all year round, exposed to weather, humidity, dirt, and long-term mechanical wear. We had to create a system that was precise, resilient in the field and subtle enough to integrate naturally into the life of the hive.
From a user experience point of view the system had to fit into existing beekeeping practices without creating unnecessary friction in installation, maintenance, or daily use.
The Engineering
Beyond product design, this project also involved deep work in software and electronic engineering. Onibi™ Base was developed as a sensor-rich hardware platform capable of capturing weight, temperature, humidity, in-hive acoustics, and entrance activity, while Onibi™ Watch extended the system through AI-powered visual monitoring.
This software layer was designed to continuously analyse bee behaviour, foraging patterns, health signals, daily losses, pollen classification, and critical events such as swarming or predator intrusion, turning complex biological activity into usable insights.
We also designed the broader connected ecosystem around it, including the role of Onibi™ Hub in addressing two fundamental field constraints: connectivity and energy reliability.
Ai Monitoring
Built on extensive training data, the system provides highly accurate measurements and actionable insights, from pollen recognition to bee in-and-out analysis.
The Result
Together, these foundations shaped a unified ecosystem where design, electronics, and intelligent software work as one. The outcome is a unified product language that enables users to monitor colony health, behaviour, foraging activity, and environmental patterns through a single connected experience.
