My objective for this project is to develop a smart bird feeder video system that uses the Arty Z7 to capture images and identify the birds that visit my back porch. I've built a similar device for capturing pictures of Halloween trick-or-treaters using a raspberry pi as the main controller.
I've found several smart bird feeders online, however, they are mostly doorbell cameras stuffed into a feeder. There are a few security cameras available with some sort of face recognition software, but mostly to recognize the difference between a person at the door, or a dog running past the camera. The field of view and focus on these cameras can be a limitation.
The project outline looks like this:
- Physical Hardware
- - Design a weather resistant enclosure for the Arty Z7, camera, and power supply
- - Determine location for camera with good field of view and shielded from severe weather and other critters (squirrels and racoons)
- Software
- - Install latest AMD Vivado and Vitis
- - Generate bitstream for Arty Z7 PL for USB/HDMI video and other interesting I/O using AMD Vivado and Vitis
- - Install petalinux and pynq on Arty Z7 PS
- - Develop image capture routine
- - Develop image recognition routines
- - Develop bird recognition routines
- - Develop image database and bird database
- - Develop servo control for Pan and Tilt functions if time allows to enable scanning
This is a bird:
This is a hummingbird:
This is not a bird:
A fear that the hummingbirds will be leaving for the warm southern states by the time I finish this project, however, the more common birds should stick around for a while. If there are no birds to see, I will use some man-made versions for testing.
