Militarizing your backyard with Python, Arduino, and computer vision.

As the person who wrote the OpenCV Python bindings, this makes me inordinately happy.

I think a fair number of homeowners would be willing to pay a lot of money for a version of this system they didn't have to program themselves. And had more firepower, of course.

A real python would probably take care of the squirrels even better.

I'm impressed that he can get low false positives with such simple methods. That's great to know.<p>If he tried using line detection, vectorize it, then train the algorithm with the tagged shapes of squirrels. Would that be too slow to do in real time? Or could it work to reduce false positives?

I attended the talk. It was pretty cool, especially the OpenCV part. Frankly I think he needs to upgrade the armaments. Hook that bad boy up to the hose with a nozzle.<p>Frankly, if you wanted to, you could hook such a system up to an automated sprinkler control system and just turn on the water for whatever area the squirrels happen to be in at the moment. It would only have to be on for a few moments. Soon they'd think your yard is some sort of special hell, where water follows them wherever they go.

Reminded me a bit of this old project from someone trying to stop non-cats or their cat carrying a dead animal from entering a cat door:<p><a href="http://www.quantumpicture.com/Flo_Control/Flo_Control_1/flo_control_1.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.quantumpicture.com/Flo_Control/Flo_Control_1/flo_...</a>

One of the spectators in that video talks about <a href="http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/tld.html" rel="nofollow">http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/tld.html</a> which was discussed on HN before and a nice demo of what computer vision can do...

Awesome talk, but I can't resist: Leave it to a software engineer to find a $250 solution to a $10 problem :) (<a href="http://www.wbcboulder.com/pole_mounted_baffles_sub.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.wbcboulder.com/pole_mounted_baffles_sub.html</a>)

What about airsoft? You could mount a cheap, automatic, battery-powered unit and seriously sting those squirrels! I thought of using a similar system to protect the chickens I've got from the feral/neighborhood cats (I do have a fence... but that doesn't feel "complete").

15:50 for the cannon in action.

I wonder if something like the Blender Defender (<a href="http://www.plasma2002.com/blenderdefender" rel="nofollow">http://www.plasma2002.com/blenderdefender</a>) would be more effective than the water. A strobe light and/or a rattle to frighten it off. Ultrasonic would be good as well if there was decent evidence it worked.

Seems like you'd be better off cutting off the approaches to the feeder. But the project is super cool. For more power, I'd use a power washer. :)

My bro has a problem with a mole digging all the backyard, any idea for that problem? maybe a flying drone that drops bombs on its head ? :)

The presenter's personal site: <a href="http://kurtgrandis.com/blog/" rel="nofollow">http://kurtgrandis.com/blog/</a>

neat and awesome talk