Sam's tech

the problem

I have some pet black birds which come to visit me every morning for food. The only problem with this is that bigger birds like greedy pigeons like to steal my black birds food.

the idea

One morning I came up with the idea to build a system to scare away pigeons without scaring my black birds. For this system I used a set of digital scales, a raspberry pi 4b, some speakers and some very long usb-a cable. On the table where the birds land to get their food I put the scales then on top of them I put a large plank of wood that covered the table to increase the scales range and keep things tidy. On the raspberry pi I created a python script which could connect to the digital scales using a usb-a cable and read the weight that was currently on the scales. Using this data I could subtract the amount the plank of wood weighed from the input then get the average amount a black bird weighed from the internet then if the value that was inputed exceeded the weight range of a black bird then a call of a peregrine falcon would play through the speakers and scare the pigeons away.

the idea in practise

Now the big question will it work? The answer yes but no the system worked flawlessly but the birds wouldn’t trust the plank of wood as it was new and raised off the table.