Image Capturing Bird Feeder

The instructable challenges this summer provided a great opportunity to explore cameras and microcontrollers (MCUs)..  We built a bird feeder (aka the birdtweeder) that takes a picture when a bird stops by for some food and sends the photo to Twitter using TwitPic. 

While this project focuses on bird feeders, the code and camera setup are quite applicable to other projects in which tweeting a picture is desired!

Step 1: Materials

I used the following for this project:

• Adafruit XBee Adapter ($10)
• LilyPad Arduino ($20)
• XBee Series 1 ($22) x2
• LinkSprite JPEG Camera ($50)
• LiPo Battery ($9)
• Infrared Emitter Detector Pair ($2)
• Snap-On XBee Breakout ($10)
• 100 Ohm and 10K Ohm Resistor
• Wire
• Bird Feeder
• Bird Seed

While the LilyPad Arduino is intended for sewing, it's a great flat Arduino.  Perfect for fitting in a bird feeder!

Comments

[elliottkm]

how do you use the python application? I have copied the data from the serial port I am just trying to figure out how to read the txt file using the python program. Where do I put the name of the txt file in the python program?

[vdubbin]

FYI: I pulled my hair out on this a bit. It turns out the code is poor (even more poor than my poor code!). The block of missing data went away, for me, when I made sure to get all the data back after a "ReadDataCmd". Per the manual data is returns in <5-byte header>, , <5-byte footer>. The examples do not wait for those last 5 bytes!

Try this:
while(!EndFlag)
{
j=0;
k=0;
count=0;
SendReadDataCmd();
while(k < (datasize+10)){ // 5-bytes, data, 5-bytes

while(mySerial.available()==0){
// waiting forever for something at port
// probably needs some sort of timeout here...
};

incomingbyte=mySerial.read();
k++;
if((k>5)&&(j<32)&&(!EndFlag))
{
a[j]=incomingbyte; // loading up a buffer
if((a[j-1]==0xFF)&&(a[j]==0xD9)) //Check if the picture is over
EndFlag=1;
j++;
count++;
}

}

for(j=0;j {
Serial.write(a[j]);

}
}

[nrush]

Hey! You got one! :-)

http://twitpic.com/5j4g0t

[a-maw]

underconstruction ,,, & reply later :p that's really nice ;)

[dombeef]

How is this a toy?

[nku]

hum just a tip for students like me to get those components here
maybe check taobao dot com you'll find smtimes pretty interesting prices

then for payments shipping either email the seller , or you know some friend living in china , or just use a reliable taobao agent like this one taobaospree dot com (ask for Susan or Doris)
or pick another but check their reputation before paypal etc
oh i dont work for these guys ok im student , just made lots of good deals with them for tech stuff and quality is good so thought i could share ;-)

[dombeef]

Is it waterproof?

[quasiben]

Not at the moment but it easily could be!

[pdxnat]

This is a very well written instructable and a totally cool build project! Thanks for posting it!

[quasiben]

Thanks for the kind words! I think there's still lots of room for improvement. I purchased the TCM8240MD camera from sparkfun and have a breakout board coming later this week. Also, I think I might switch to ultrasonic sensor. My guess is that it's probably more reliable than the IR gate.

[AgeingHippy]

Great idea.

How about some action shots? :)

[quasiben]

I will post them as soon as I get a good one. It's been rainy and no birds have been stopping by :( . You can see what I've got so far at http://twitter.com/birdtweeder

[zazenergy]

Wonderful project!