The trouble with tribbles^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h deer

My FarmBot has come under attack from deer. I’m putting a fence project into my [long] queue. In the meantime, I’ve used deer repellent in the area and I’ve ordered a motion-detector that makes noise and flashes lights.

I’d love to connect a motion detector to my FarmBot so it can wake up and defend itself. To my experience, deer do not like an actively moving FarmBot. I saw reference to this in the older documentation (pin bindings) but I was wondering if anyone had done anything like this and might recommend a motion detection device with a suitable output.

Thanks
Jack

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Wouldn’t a nice deer steak taste very good with some of the veggies from your Farmbot? :wink:

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Intriguing use case :slight_smile:

Seems to me a “helper” application running on an “always on, always connected” machine in the house which monitors the motion detector and which then sends a JSON API request to your bot to run your special “Deer Scare Sequence” might be a Q’n’D solution :thinking:

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I live in an area with deer also, so I’ve spent some time thinking this one over, but I never built anything and I’ve been lucky that they stay away from the garden, unlike other places I’ve lived with deer.

Here’s how I would probably do it:

  1. Purchase or build a passive infrared sensor that is able to trigger one of the free GPIO ports.
  2. Make the appropriate sequence
  3. Create a pin binding that binds the sequence from step 2 to the GPIO pin in step 1.

That’s just an idea, though. I’ve never tried this. Please do share your progress if you end up doing it! There could be other issues with this idea. Eg:

  • Will the deer eventually learn to ignore the movement?
  • It will detect anything generating body heat, which could get annoying.

I look forward to seeing what you build.

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@RickCarlino, I can’t seem to find the wiring definition for those headers. I was going to remove Button 5 (which has 4 wires) and use that header. Can you tell me what the pinout on that Button 5 header is?

@ClosedCircuit, Heck YES!!! Since I don’t know how (or perhaps have the stomach) to kill and clean an animal, I try to create a nice habitat for them. But the carnivore in me would love to create a full meal. And I bet a glass of red wine would go nicely.

@JSimmonds, I like the idea of quick and dirty, especially until I have those header values. This also has benefit of keeping all 5 of my precious buttons. I have not yet sent any JSON API requests to my bot. I’ll dig around and see what that takes - assume I’ll need an API key and something to call the API from my client. Its a good excuse to dig in further. :slight_smile:

Thanks
Jack

FWIW, my aunt battles deer constantly. She tried sensors with lights and noise makers, but they got used to that. She found talk radio kept them at bay for a while, but the deer soon figured out it was harmless since they couldn’t understand the concepts being discussed :stuck_out_tongue: In all seriousness, she had to go into Fort Knox mode with 6 foot high fencing. That deterred most of the deer…the more adventurous few still hopped in, but the problem got better. Sometimes low tech will beat high tech as the deer quickly adapt when there’s high density nutrition easily available. High tech is more fun to play with though, so there’s that… But not much beats the taste of venison jerky.

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I suspect I’ll have to go with a fence but I’ll have to take the time to build it. I was hoping to hold the buggers off for a bit with a scare tactic . . .