Introduction: Scare Owl

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About: Hello, My name is Amber and I'm currently a student MCT at Howest (Kortrijk Belgium).


Scare owl is an project I made, intended for people who generally sow plants and have problems with birds being attracted to their garden or crops.


With a build-in motion sensor it will not only scare away the birds with movement caused by servo motors in the wings but also sound of an owl itself and led lights any color will do.

This project has various sensors like temperature, humidty sensor and a motion sensor to monitor the environment around.

Keep in mind the owl itself is made with EVA foam, I'll suggest alternatives later on the page.



Supplies

List with supplies:

  • Raspberry Pi 4
  • DHT11 - Temperature and Humidity Sensor
  • PIR motion sensor
  • DS18B20 - One wire sensor
  • 2 leds (any color will do)
  • lcd display
  • 2 servo motors
  • a wooden chest to manage your cables
  • speaker ( with audio and usb cable)
  • Basic breadboard & F-F, M-F Jumper cables +- x40
  • T-Extentionboard (bcm)


For making the owl itself( if you want to make it yourself):

  • Exacto knife (for precision cutting)
  • EVA foam (used 5mm and 7mm thickness) (95cm on 45 cm is more then enough)
  • EVA clay foam (not necessary)
  • heatgun
  • dremmel (for making the edge round and smoother, using sanding paper is just fine)
  • contact cement
  • 2 wooden sticks about about 7 cm
  • drill

Attachments

Step 1: Scheme

  • Follow the scheme, don't forget the resistors for the motion sensor, one wire and leds.
  • Both leds are on a same gpio pin and the servo motors.
  • the speaker is connected to the usb and the audio jack of the raspberry pi


Step 2: Repository

Clone my repository: https://github.com/howest-mct/2022-2023-projectone-AmberDebouvere

  • Create a virtual environment

'python -m venv <venv_name>'

'pip install -r requirements.txt'

  • Install the following

pip install adafruit-io

apt install apache2

  • for the speaker

'python3 -m pip install -U pygame'



Step 3: Housing


The owl is made out of EVA foam the head is made with the 5mm and the body itself with 7mm.

For the ones that don't want to work with foam, alternatives are to 3D print it or buy one of those owl that are meant to scare away birds. They are hollow and could be used if you know how to work with hard plastic and find an alternative for the wings.


For the head of the owl I used a template from etsy

https://www.etsy.com/be/listing/847750658/diy-owl-mask-template-for-eva-foam?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=foam+craft+owls&ref=sr_gallery-1-2&sts=1&organic_search_click=1


I made the wings a span of 24 cm , attach the wooden stick(7-8cm is enough) with a hole in it to fit the servo motor, glue it shut.

In the body I made a hole for the motion sensor which is about 3.5 cm diameter to give the motion sensor more field to detect.


Connect the leds to the head, make sure the wiring is long enough for this.

The eyes are made out of paper that I glued on.