I have a 75' x 50' piece of land that I want to make into a butterfly garden!

the land runs north south with fence on the east and west sides!!

Now here is where the dreaming imagination comes in.

I need a deer deterrent.

I want to "sense" the presence of a deer and take an action.

Remember the Nerdkit Servo Squirter project.

That is what I am imagining doing!!

So how do I sense the presence of the deer and then how do I point a water hose at it?

This could be a commercial product. But that is not my immediate intent.

I have thought of having a voice ask "friend or foe" to make sure I do not squirt any humans. There really should not be humans on the land except for myself or guest so I could manually turn it off.

So where do I start?

This will be a long time project that I am just thinking about and need your help!!

Thanks,

Ralph

Ralph

This sounds like a neat project. I think I would do it in blocks.

Block 1 IR sensors Lay out the perimeter with 8 or more sensor sets
Block 2 Servo program to move hose based on which quadrant sensed the whatever.

Just some rambling but you got me to thinking.

Thanks Jim

How about instead of the water cannon, make a rustling noise based on the proximity sensors Jim was talking about. A simple Vibrating motor against an aluminum pie pan would make a racket that would probably frighten the Deer away. Or, maybe get some natural predator scent to keep them out. Other options might include video tracking via a Raspberry PI, I don't know about that first hand, but there are several videos online of people tracking balls.

Rick

Ralph

Your idea of sensing an intruding deer and then squirting water in that direction could be a technical challenge, and interesting to attempt. It seams to me that it may require more then a micro to actually do an acceptable job of determining the location of the target. Rick has mentioned the possible use of a Raspberry Pi to do the tracking, that does sound interesting. I may look into that type of technology to track a moving target with a camera on a controllable swivel mount (gimbal mount).

Rick and Jim may have a much more practical approach. Sensing the movements of a warm blooded animal could be easily accomplished using readily available IR motion detectors. A combination of some type of simple noise maker and possibly LED type rope/ribbon lights could be triggered each time a intruder is detected. There are numerous inexpensive weather proof LED strings available that produces patterns that give the illusion of motion.

On a somewhat related topic, (only in the sense that we are discussing tracking a moving object), I would be very interested in learning more about some of the technology integrated into Lily flying camera. It appears to me to be an amazing system and seams to be capable of tracking the moving target transmitter effortlessly. I can not help but wander if a phantom drone could be adapted using a Raspberry PI to control the camera gimbal and achieve a automatic camera lock on a object as the drone is manoeuvred using the radio controller.

Darryl

Thanks, I welcome any and all feedback.

Lets start with Jim's #1, the IR sensor.

I assume something like this

Now instead of multiple sensors I was thinking of mounting a sensor on a servo pivot station and rotating back and forth.

I will have some trees and bushes these "should" not be detected.

I like Rick's idea of making some noise but I wonder what my neighbors might think?

Possible I could make a Ultra Sonic blast!

Making a noise would be simpler than moving/pointing a water hose.

Making the noise directional might make it more effective but just BANG should work.

Thanks for the input!!

More, anybody else or more from Jim and Rick always welcome!!

Ralph

This was more the sensor I was thinking of. PIR Sensor I think if you moved the sensor though, it would detect that as motion.

Darryl, That lily drone looks very cool.

For expediency sake I might just go with a couple of these

But that is no fun.

I bought a $50.00 drone off Amazon and have a great time learning how to fly it.

Now they fly themselves like the Lily Darryl referenced.

I found water nozzles with PIR sensors also!

I'd still like to think about how to do tracking that would be fun!!

Ralph