Things rarely go well when humans mix with wildlife. The problems are exacerbated in the suburbs, where bears dine on bird feeders and garbage cans, raccoons take up residence in attics, and coyotes make off with the family cat. And in the suburbs, nuisance wildlife can be an intractable problem because the options for dealing with it are so limited.

Not to be dissuaded in the battle to protect his roses, [dlf.myyta] built this motion-activated sentry gun to apply some watery aversion therapy to marauding deer. Shown in action below against a bipedal co-conspirator, the sentry gun has pretty much what you’d expect under the hood — Raspberry Pi, NoIR camera, a servo for aiming and a solenoid valve to control the water. OpenCV takes care of locating the intruders and swiveling the nozzle to center mass; since the deer are somewhat constrained by a fence, there’s no need to control the nozzle’s elevation. Everything is housed nicely in a plastic ammo can for portability and waterproofing. Any target that stands still for more than three seconds gets a hosing; we assume this is effective, but alas, no snuff films were provided.

We’re not sure if [dlf.myyta]’s code can discern friend from foe, and in this litigious world, hosing the neighbor’s kid could be a catastrophe. Perhaps version 2.0 can include image recognition for target verification.

I need something like that with a night vision camera to take out the possums when they hold their marsupial olympics on the roof of the back deck at 3AM of a morning.

The pigeons on my balcony would love this.

Add a presure washer, auto drone removal.

And if you’re in the USA it then becomes an auto federal offense.

And if you wander into its sensor range it becomes an auto extreme exfoliation and eye removal device.

Everything is housed nicely in a plastic ammo can for portability and waterproofing.

And the fan opening cut into the side renders the waterproofing ability of the ammo can irrelevant.

Mostly. But there is a nice roof over the fan opening. So it is not IP65 any more but probably IP22.

I was wondering what the hell in there needs forced air cooling. Surely not the pi. I’d love to see a cell phone with an aftermarket heatsink and fan, which is about the same idea.

“…, and coyotes make off with the family cat. ”

https://www.desertusa.com/animals/photos2/bobcat.jpg

I would love to have this nice cat. :-) But it’s probably illegal or at least very expensive to have it.

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/a-minus-minus.png

Bobcats don’t have tails.

Something is wrong on the Internet!

(Left as an exercise to the motivated reader.)

Are there reports of success or failure against the cervid foe? What if they fail to carry umbrellas?

He’s inadvertently breeding IR-cloaked super deer. The stealth deer will ruin us all. Oh, the hubris.

Hmmm…. this looks like fun. Maybe I’ll build one to entertain my kids in the summer.

I’ve got to get something in place for tomato season later this year. The next squirrel that picks a tomato gets a bath. I’ll either end up with more tomatoes or very clean squirrels. (I mean really, how evil does a creature need to be to take one bite out of a tomato and then drop it on the ground.)

I watched a bastard of a black bear tear down an apple tree that my wife planted when we moved into our house. Caught the whole thing on the security camera. He reached for one apple at the top, yanked the whole tree down, and just walked away. Jerk.

I’m loo,king for a New Security Camera setup. Need NightVision/illumination etc. Looking for recommendations. Murph

For squirrels, an upside down can of dust-off would be more effective. Tho a dewar of liquid nitrogen might be fun too…

The bitterant (in “canned air”) would pretty much render the crops uneatable. This damned stuff has been put in almost everything nowdays, due to the huffers/drinkers. It will linger on your tools and cause a cross contamination for a long time. Loooaaads of fun when you inadvertently get it on your fingers and then handle contact lenses. Normal hand washing wont get it from under fingernails. Second-hand computer gear can be problematic for contamination with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitterant

I was rather hoping the video would show footage of an actual deer getting bathed. Kinda wanted to see the response.

Umbrella…check. Hiking boots…check. Plaid pajama pants…check. Let’s make a video!

Umbrellas are essential for rogue turkey defense!

Since plain water can be discharged from a car legally, could this deal with Bambi (bam-bye) incidents? How about a network of these along known deer zones.

Hmm… I was told there would be deer.

The umbrella is really cool!

Image recognition could help to keep the feral cats from pooping in my yard, while allowing my own cats to lounge in the sun.

Your cats are lazy bums. ;-)

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