A few weeks ago, we shared the results of our first Hive Community Survey. It helped us understand who was joining the project, validate some of our assumptions, and most importantly, it sparked the idea that eventually became HiveLab.

Since then, our community has continued to grow. More than 370 people are now part of the Hive mailing list, and 60+ members took the time to participate in our second survey.

Once again, the goal wasn’t to collect statistics. It was to better understand the people we’re building Hive for, learn what matters most to them, and make better decisions before launching on Kickstarter.

If you haven’t read the results of our first survey yet, you can find them in our post Insights from the first Hive Community Survey.

Let’s take a look at the analysis of our second community survey

A huge thank you to everyone who took part, shared their thoughts, and contributed their ideas: your input is truly helping shape Hive, and every single response makes a difference.

An experienced Raspberry Pi community

One thing quickly became clear: Hive is attracting exactly the audience we hoped to reach. Over half of the respondents already run several Raspberry Pi systems, while more than 20% regularly work with Compute Modules. Another 8% use Raspberry Pi professionally, leaving only a small percentage of participants who are completely new to the platform.

This tells us that Hive isn’t simply attracting curious makers. It’s reaching homelab enthusiasts, developers and professionals who already understand the strengths, and the limitations, of running multiple Raspberry Pi systems. For us, that’s a very encouraging sign.

The biggest challenge isn’t performance

When we asked what people struggle with most in their current setup, the answers were remarkably consistent.

• The most common issue mentioned was the complexity of managing cables and power supplies.
• Many respondents also highlighted that expanding their infrastructure becomes increasingly difficult over time.
• Space limitations were frequently cited as another key challenge.
• Remote management of systems was also identified as a recurring pain point.
• Cooling and noise concerns were mentioned by a significant number of participants.

This reinforces one of the main ideas behind Hive. People aren’t necessarily looking for more computing power.
They’re looking for infrastructure that’s cleaner, easier to expand, easier to manage and better organised.
This is something we already started exploring in depth in our first prototype analysis of Hive, where we looked at the industrial design direction and the importance of building a system that goes far beyond a traditional DIY cluster. From the very beginning, Hive was meant to be modular, structured and intentionally designed as a cohesive product rather than a collection of individual boards.

That has always been one of Hive’s core goals, and it’s reassuring to see the community identify exactly the same problems.

Hive is seen as a platform, not just a cluster

When we asked what people were looking for, the most common answer wasn’t AI or enterprise infrastructure.
It was something much simpler. A cleaner, more organized homelab.
At the same time, nearly a quarter of respondents said Kubernetes and container platforms were their main interest, while others highlighted learning, experimentation, local AI and private infrastructure.
When we combined those results with another question: how they would organize Hive? the picture became even clearer.
More than 63% would use Hive as a distributed cluster running technologies such as Kubernetes, k3s or Docker Swarm.

Hive is becoming exactly what we imagined from the beginning: a modular infrastructure platform capable of supporting many different workloads rather than a single predefined use case.

Your feedback is shaping Kickstarter

The survey also helped us make decisions about the Kickstarter campaign itself.

When asked how they would prefer to buy Hive, almost 62% preferred preconfigured bundles with the best possible pricing, while 38% expressed interest in a Build Your Hive option that would allow them to customize every component. Both approaches clearly have value.

Our current plan is to offer both options: more aggressively priced preconfigured bundles with fixed features as the main Kickstarter rewards, alongside a “Build Your Hive” option for users who want to fully customize their setup.

Reusing existing Raspberry Pi boards

One of the most interesting questions in this survey explored something we’ve been considering internally for some time.
Would people like the ability to reuse their existing Raspberry Pi boards inside Hive?
The answer was clear.
More than 63% said yes.

We’re now evaluating an optional adapter node that would allow Raspberry Pi 5 boards to integrate into the Hive ecosystem while benefiting from many of the same features as beenode.

If development progresses as expected, we’d love to make this available as a Kickstarter Stretch Goal.

Several participants also suggested expanding this idea to support additional single-board computers in the future—an interesting possibility we’ll continue exploring as Hive evolves.

Great ideas for future Stretch Goals

One of the most valuable parts of every survey is the open feedback section.
Many participants proposed ideas that align closely with discussions we’ve already been having internally.
Several suggestions appeared repeatedly, including:

• An internal Ethernet switch to reduce external cabling.
• Expansion boards for additional M.2 SSD storage.
• Better support for integrating existing Raspberry Pi hardware.
• More advanced management features, APIs and automation.
• Storage-focused configurations and optional expansion modules.

Some of these ideas are already part of our internal roadmap, while others are now being evaluated as potential Kickstarter Stretch Goals.

This is exactly why we keep asking for feedback.
Sometimes the community validates ideas we’ve already had. Sometimes, you bring ideas and points of view that we hadn’t considered.

HiveLab is attracting exactly the right projects

One of the biggest additions in this second survey was the launch of the first HiveLab Community Call.
We invited community members to tell us what they would build if given remote access to a Hive system.
More than 42% expressed interest in participating, and the project ideas covered an impressive range of use cases.

Some of the most common themes included:

• Kubernetes, Talos and container orchestration
• AI agents and local LLM platforms
• Self-hosted infrastructure for homes and small businesses
• Security research
• Edge computing and distributed services
• Monitoring, networking and infrastructure management

Several participants also proposed highly specialized workloads and distributed research environments.
These are exactly the kind of real-world projects we hoped HiveLab would encourage.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll create a dedicated sub-list of interested participants based on the emails submitted. We will then reach out directly to each of them to go deeper into their ideas, clarify technical requirements and timelines, and also discuss important aspects such as privacy, data handling and best practices for running community-driven infrastructure projects. This process will allow us to properly shape the HiveLab program, define its structure, and officially kick it off with a first group of selected participants.
We’re incredibly excited to see what this first group of builders will create.

Building Hive together

To everyone who is participating in our Community surveys: thank you.

Your ideas are already helping shape what Hive becomes next, and we can’t wait to share the next steps with you.

If you want to stay involved in the journey, the best way is to join our mailing list. There we share early updates, behind-the-scenes progress, and first access to new announcements before anyone else. It’s also where we’ll be inviting people to future HiveLab opportunities and community calls.

And if you’re just discovering Hive, we’d love for you to take a closer look. You can find more details about the project, our vision, and what we’re building on our landing page.

Thank you again for being part of this from the very beginning.