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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Depending on which hemisphere of the Earth you're currently reading this from, summer is finally starting to fight its way to the surface. For the more "green" of our readers, that can mean it's time to start making plans for summer gardening. But as anyone who's ever planted something edible can tell you, garden pests such as squirrels are fantastically effective at turning all your hard work into a wasteland. Finding ways to keep them away from your crops can be a full-time job, but luckily it's a job nobody will mind if automation steals from humans.
[Peter Quinn] writes in to tell us about the elaborate lengths he is going to keep bushy-tailed marauders away from his tomatoes this year. Long term he plans on setting up a non-lethal sentry gun to scare them away, but before he can get to that point he needs to perfect the science of automatically targeting his prey. At the same time, he wants to train the system well enough that it won't fire on humans or other animals such as cats and birds which might visit his garden.
Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/04/30/training-the-squirrel-terminator/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 02 2018, @03:58PM (4 children)
Round about 10 years ago I floated an idea to my employer that went absolutely nowhere, but...
If you set up a web camera (or two) focused on the bird feeder, or garden, or whatever other squirrel attractor you have, and also outfit the area with a web-controlled water cannon, the idea was to let people on the internet "lock on" our target tracking software to the squirrel in the image and then fire away, possibly with multiple trackers and multiple water cannons. Yes, lag is a real thing, but that's what the image tracking is for - plus, it's a great demonstration of the power of our image stabilization and target tracking software.
It was supposed to be a more humane spin on the web controlled deer rifles that were making the news at the time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:30PM (1 child)
Haha somewhat creepy to intentionally have a public webcam like that, but super cool! What was wrong with your employer???
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 03 2018, @12:22AM
A wild guess: somebody shot him over the net with a watercannon while he was inspecting a bird feeder. He broke his neck in the fall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday May 02 2018, @10:45PM (1 child)
I can see one problem with that...
Being the internet, I would expect random idiots to use the water gun on the birds as well.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 03 2018, @12:41AM
Plot twist: there's another, more squirrel proof, feeder off-camera nearby.
🌻🌻 [google.com]