BeeHive

BeeHive is an open-source electronics ecosystem for building your own research equipment — and for learning the electronics and programming to do it. An ESP32 mainboard plus single-function daughter boards click together like building blocks, so you can assemble, repurpose, and share custom instruments without starting from scratch each time.

Ingredients & recipes

BeeHive is organised around a simple metaphor:

• 🧩 Ingredients — the boards. A mainboard carries the microcontroller; daughter boards each do one job (drive a solenoid, read a sensor, switch an LED). They share one 4-pin connector, so they mix freely.
• 🍯 Recipes — the builds. Combine ingredients to make a working instrument: a reward-delivery rig, an odour stimulator, a gas-analyser multiplexer, and more.
• 🔧 Techniques — the kitchen skills: soldering a board, flashing MicroPython, and designing your own daughter board.
• 🎓 Courses — a project-based introduction to electronics and MicroPython for total beginners.

Why BeeHive

• ⚡ Built for the lab. Runs on 12 V DC (mains adapter or battery), handles the currents and voltages real equipment needs (e.g. Peltier elements at 12 V / 5 A) that hobby prototyping systems don't.
• 🔁 Interoperable. The connector order matches Grove, Qwiic and STEMMA, and a MikroBUS mainboard opens up 500+ Click Boards.
• 🐍 One language, end to end. Program in MicroPython — the same Python you already use for data analysis — from experiment control to plotting. Or drop to C++ (Arduino) when you need an existing library.
• 🌍 Buildable anywhere. Through-hole parts, 1–2 layer boards, and cheap worldwide-available components mean boards can be hand-soldered or home-etched.