FreeBeerReekingMonk thank you for the answer and the encouragement for my work.

You are right that while working on my ideas, I may find something very interesting, who knows. For example, bee hive sound analysis is very interesting, becomes a bit popular now, and many years ago, I've got one idea from one Russian beekeeping journal about completely different and more serious approach to that. Now I see I can do all that with Perl, it is really amazing

Yesterday I've looked a little about RPi and it became obvious that it is more then a great tool for me. Especially because I am now enough prepared to start - after taking two Linux courses a year ago and since I've came into Perl. Before that, as I've already wrote, RPi wasn't enough attractive to me and maybe that also had to do with their way to represent it. Regarding PICs, I will need some learning, but I feel I am prepared for that too.

That small Serbian company that has been mentioned in previous posts produces some extensions for RRis, so with use of these it is possible to connect up to 100 different click boards that they produce, to RPi. On the other side, I can make some electronics myself too, since I have education in electronics, that just has to be renewed

Also: the same set-up you make for monitoring your bees can be used in a tomato-greenhouse

Yes, I really love gardening and thanks for nice links too

Low tech does not mean bad tech..

It is always so thrilling to me. Recently I've found an astronomer's website where they measure star brightness with Perl. And regardless of Perl, I am always delighted to see examples of simple solutions for something very complex.