If you are interested in obtaining the Sense/Stage MiniBee, please contact me through the mail address at the bottom of this page, so I can make an offer.

A kit to get started, with 2 Sense/Stage MiniBees, a coordinator board, 3 XBees, and a battery charger, will cost € 175,21 excluding VAT, and € 212 including VAT. On top of this there will be shipping costs from the Netherlands. You will need to purchase the batteries (see below) separately elsewhere.

Please note that due to holidays I will not ship any items until the end of August 2022

The table below lists the prices of separate items, in case you want to obtain a kit with more Sense/Stage MiniBees, or a single MiniBee for example.

item price excl VAT price incl VAT
Sense/Stage MiniBee € 32,23 € 39,00
Sense/Stage XPee expansion € 1,61 € 1,95
Sense/Stage XPree expansion € 1,90 € 2,30
XBee S11 € 23,97 € 29,00
XBee Pro S11 € 38,02 € 46,00
Sparkfun XBee Explorer USB € 23,14 € 28,00
SparkFun LiPo charger basic - mini-USB € 8,68 € 10,50

You will to purchase batteries to power the Sense/Stage MiniBees

Items that you will need, but that I do not have in stock are the ones below:

Some suggested shops in Europe are2:

Frequently asked questions

How can I order the MiniBees?

You can order the MiniBees by sending an email to the address listed at the bottom of the page. The prices are listed at the top of this page to inform you of what the cost will be. If you write me a clear email stating what you would like to order, and your address, I can determine the shipping costs and prepare an invoice. Once the invoice is paid, I will start preparing and ship the package.

I am not sure what I should get, can you give me advice?

If you want to get started and want to explore the possibilities, the kit I propose at the top of the page is a good set to start with. If you have a specific project in mind, you can write me and describe what you want to achieve and what sort of setup you are using or planning to use. I can then give you advice of how you could use the Sense/Stage MiniBee for the project and for example which type of XBee to use. Over the past ten years, I have adviced and worked with many different artists using the Sense/Stage MiniBees, and I use them myself in my artistic work, so I can give you a good advice based on a good understanding of both the technical and artistic aspects.

Why are you not selling the batteries?

There are strict regulations on the shipping of LiPo batteries. For that reason it is better to obtain them from shops local to you, that have the volume of sales to deal with these shipping restrictions.

Can you give me a discount?

In general, I do not give discounts. My margin on selling the Sense/Stage MiniBees is low, so in a sense, the prices listed above are already discounted prices to make the technology available to artists at a low cost.

I have a super urgent project and I need the Sense/Stage MiniBees tomorrow! Can you help me?

I understand the issues of short term development and last minute problems. However, I am a busy person myself with an artistic practice and involved in different organisations. So I cannot always ship items very quickly, as I may be on the road myself for a project, or have already scheduled my days with appointments so that I cannot take care of shipping the same day an order comes in. That being said, I always try to react as quickly as possible on emails, and give an indication of when I can ship, provided the invoice has been paid.

Can you send it with express shipping?

No, I know how to ship with PostNL and where to drop packages off in my neighbourhood to get them on their way. Arranging express shipping makes it more complicated for me to ship it, and from experience I’ve learned it takes me longer to ship a package this way.

Documentation on the Sense/Stage MiniBee.

MiniBee

The Sense/Stage MiniBee is a small microcontroller board based on the Arduino, integrated with a connection for an XBee wireless chip. It is small and comes with preloaded firmware to use it easily in your wireless projects for a lot of common sensing and actuating purposes. As a bonus there is a 3-axis accelerometer on board. Cross platform open source software sends the data from the boards to your interactive environment via OpenSoundControl (OSC).

Overview of the features:

  • 6 analog inputs: A0, A1, A2, A3, A6, A7
  • 8 digital inputs or outputs: D3, D5, D6, D7, D8, D9, D10, D11
  • PWM (“analog”) output, at pins D3, D5, D6, D9, D10, D11
  • TWI (or I2C) communication: SDA (A4), SCL (A5)
  • Integrated ADXL345 – 3-axis accelerometer
  • Serial I/O: RX, TX (to XBee)
  • Power input (between 3.3V and 5V), through battery connector and coin cell battery
  • Regulated power output: 3.3V, GND
  • On/off switch
  • Short circuit protection with a resetting fuse
  • Preprogrammed with firmware for wireless configuration for using many common sensors
  • Firmware communication with software data sharing network supported by many common interactive software environments (e.g. SuperCollider, Max/MSP, PureData, Processing).
  • Status LEDs for power, association with XBee network, XBee receiving data, and configuration status
  • Small footprint

Documentation on the Sense/Stage MiniBee is found on this website. Currently the website is being rewritten as an overhaul of the old websites:

  1. The XBee Series 1 are no longer produced. I still have stock available though, and I will sell those until I run out before making the transition to XBee Series 3. ↩ ↩2

  2. This list from an online search performed in October 2021; there may be more shops than these and stock will change at these shops. If you have a shop and want to be listed here, please write me an email. ↩