2 Wheel Robot Powered by MQTT & Node-RED
How I built a 2-wheel robot from scratch using Python & an Android app
Why I made this?
I like watching birds in my garden, the problem is that they move so fast, and it was hard to get a good sight of them.
So I had an idea, I decided to build a smart bird feeder that could record the birds for me. It was a great excuse to reuse my existing components from previous projects and get the 3D printer moving again.
The 3D printed body of the bird feeder
The whole thing is pretty simple, I re-used a raspberry pi from one of my previous projects, I put a simple motion detection program on the raspberry pi.
When a bird lands on the feeder, the program sees it and tells the camera to start recording a video. It saves the video in short bursts of time and saves it onto the local memory.
Few Captured Images
After I put it all together, I filled it with bird food and set it outside. A few hours later I went to check the memory card.
I was managed to capture few images and videos of the birds, which turned out great.
Conclusion
I learned few things from this project, mainly improved my skills on 3D printing and CAD modelling.
This was also my first time trying to use the screw inserts, with the help of a solder iron, I was able to insert them into the 3D printed body to be able to easily access the back of the bird feeder to insert the components and attach the cover when needed.
Maybe in the future I can re-use my existing bird feeder design and make another design or project, for example a smart bird house.
