rodent control - beta test

[shooter]

I’ve been tasked with ridding a red squirrel that has taken up residence in our attic.
Before I take drastic measures, I’m re-tasking a couple ultrasonic transducers that I used for my robotics projects.  The software pings random durations, and random directions in the hopes of irritating our furry friend back to the trees! The initial testing is promising, the red climbed into the attic, scurried around for 5 min then left!

When I doubled the square footage of our house, I built over an old section, so inside the attic is an intact, shingled roof.  I love listening to the red scurrying up the old roof, dropping his nut then chasing it down the roof, think Ice age!, my wife however sees it differently!

The hardware is a Basic Stamp II at the core, a couple “RC” type servos, and 2 Ping)) ultrasonic transceivers, operating at ~40khz.  I did consider using the pings to “track” the rodent, but writing that code might be over my pay-grade.

[BetterOffShred]

Pahahaha!   I thought you were going to say you built a 600V capacitor array to fry the little bastard when he came for some squirrel chow you had placed next to the leads..    The ultrasonic is still pretty cool though, what fun.

-Brett

[shooter]

600V capacitor array to fry the little bastard

That would constitute drastic measures
I have a circuit Judge 410 that WILL solve the problem If I have to choose between the wife or rodent.
my hope is we can all "just get along"

[BetterOffShred]

She probably doesn't like cats either eh? 

-Brett

[shooter]

doesn't like cats either

Oh ya, we have a house full and a barn full.  we have a couple resident ground hogs, couple possums, herd of 6-8 deer.  Animals in general have more "rights" than humans on this funny farm, hence the non-lethal rodent deterrent. All my neighbors do a good job of animal control so we don't have to

[sluckey]

There's a very similar device that can be installed under the hood of your vehicle. Same principle of operation. Supposed to deter rats from taking up residence and chewing expensive wiring harnesses. Cost me $600 to become aware or that device.   

[shooter]

Cost me $600

I'm hopping 120AC beat 13VDC

You DO have to "test" before you install long term.  The 1st time I did this was late 80's, my 1st wife nearly went psychotic before I figured out it was my rodent box, that one operated about 28K.

This version only sent 1 house cat ripping through the house all night, by the 2nd day, back to normal

[kagliostro]

Many years ago I soilved a rat problem on my garage using a modified electronic (sound based) mosquito repeller

So I think you have good chanches to solve your problem that way

Franco

[shooter]

Many years ago I soilved a rat problem

Another of my "odd" jobs in the Navy, I was in charge of line 6, once we had the ship tied up, I would shimmy down the line and install the rat guards.  That is one of my life's "greatest hits"   

[PRR]

I tried a supersonic peeper on my trap-wary attic mouse. In those days, I could hear the weee, so I rigged it on a switch and activated it only when I heard him. He was agitated but kept coming back. Then one time I heard him, "weee", scurry, SNAP. He had panicked at the sound and ran over a trap.

[shooter]

I finally got the hardware n software dialed so i'll be installing it and waiting.  One of my customers Is a bug guy, he said if that doesn't work, peanut butter, sunflower seeds and a rat trap!  If it does work the granary owner wants his place wired! 

[shooter]

Squirrel update;

For 10days, nobody came and rolled nuts around.  Then, I heard the rodent, like PRR’s experience, he had moved away from the sonics, but was more subdued, no nuts.  A couple days later I realized I hadn’t seen the red squirrel but a black fox was now in the nearby trees, red squirrels and fox squirrels do not play well together.  Fox usually win out, and by the changes in attic behavior, I think the fox has claimed the 80’ X 40’ X ~ 4’ nest!  I think I’ll wait and let the new family to grow up and move out.  My neighbors love small game season

[shooter]

so my rodent repelling didn't pan out, but it ran flawless for a yr! 
just gutted it, now it's gonna be a gauss detector 

got a 3 axis compass module, specs +/-8g with built in A/D, sensitivity IIRC +-1mG
took forever to find all the files in 3 different computers, only to find hyperterminal didn't make it to Win7 
go back to Win-XP, steal files, insert into Win 7.  Now I can collect data!

[John]

Damned if you don't need a hobby. 

[shooter]

This hobby is kickin my aaaasssssssssssssssss!   
I've been dinking with uP's 40yrs and they ALWAYS win 

the micro with the "cool" stuff has 2 on board co-processors that appear bad, I've wrote 5 pgrms just to test functions, gotta love troubleshooting 

my gyros showed up today, so I'm moving on.  Hopefully in a few days i'll be measuring magnet fields, scaling unknown data to something useful will come later 

[Ritchie200]

Shooter,
Have you ever seen the remnants of a squirrel family after they have been using a 80x40x4 ft toilet?  You may want to wire up that capacitor.  Find the point of intrusion drive out and cover.
Jim

[shooter]

pretty sure the cats solved the squirrel, but the bats are back from their winter caving 

when we bought this place, 1st night just before sunset, I told Pam, grab your lawnchair, she ALWAYS asks WHY 
I just told her to watch, and we agreed on a count of 39!, I said welcome to the country honey 

[shooter]

yippy skippy 

I wired up scope to verify timing/data stuff (see below)
I went hunting and found my old compass module HMC5883L, canned software and walla, reading valid data!!!!
spent hours finding out the new modules QMC5883L are China's ripoff of the Honeywell, And to not violate the "I didn't steal it" laws, they changed the reg maps 
even with the chi-datasheet I'm not good enough to get the code working, but 1 module will work for now.

As forums go, Doug, you have drawn the BEST in!!.  It take me days of web'n just to find 1 maybe answer.  Here, in 15 minutes I can find 90% of ANYTHING I've ever looked for!!
Thank you and those that made a commitment to excellence here

dave

[shooter]

the I/O board is true North, the new project board is magnetic North 

[Ritchie200]

so my rodent repelling didn't pan out, but it ran flawless for a yr! 
just gutted it, now it's gonna be a gauss detector 

got a 3 axis compass module, specs +/-8g with built in A/D, sensitivity IIRC +-1mG
took forever to find all the files in 3 different computers, only to find hyperterminal didn't make it to Win7 
go back to Win-XP, steal files, insert into Win 7.  Now I can collect data!

I also have a piece of equipment that uses HyperTerminal to download data via serial port.  I tried a few "alternatives" such as TerraTerm but could not get them to talk to each other.   I cant remember but I think I may have paid for the private edition of HyperTerminal for Win 7-10.  I could have copied the files off my old laptop like you did, I just cant remember as that was 5yrs ago.  Works flawless now but with a screaming baud speed of 1200 30 years ago is like watching paint dry nowadays.....

So I'm cornfuzed.....  You are building this gauss meter to collect what data for what? What?

Jim

[shooter]

I took an hr web'n to find the "how to" on getting telnet files 
I use the link to get the raw data into the PC so I can import to excel for graphing, since I'm more a visual guy

what data for what? What?

Ideally I can catch the once every 12,000 year polar flip 
short of that, watch the huge swings, and "snap back" of the fields.  The poles are moving pretty fast, last I checked the south pole was in the southern Indian Ocean, and the North pole is ~~1-200 miles from Siberia.
But more than anything, just keeping my brain firing, even if it's all buggy 
 

[Ritchie200]

Don't you need additional data from another location to somewhat triangulate this movement?

Jim

[shooter]

   I'm doing the Einstein thing, It's all relative 
the gyro is 3 axis, so eventually i'll mess with gimbaling it to "zero" out the sensor, collect "baseline" data, which should? be 0,0,0 for "normal" "north" magnetic field.  IF, the field "shifts", those values should yield direction. amplitude (strength), and speed is still way over my paygrade.

still wrapin my pee-brain around scaling, so far 65535 = +/-8Gausss, so 1 bit = .122 mGauss (I think).
so in the morning when I'm drinkin coffee and see a spike where X = -390 instead of baseline 0, and I didn't park the mower by the sensor, is that a 390 *.122mGuass shift left?   
I just sent off for pieces parts so I can "take it in the field".  on the bench I have x=0, confirmed with analog compass, and it fluctuates 0 +/- 3, code is working, data looks "valid"  Y & Z for now are just there for looks 

[shooter]

Not quite ready for peer review; 

Last 2 nights the aurora was possible here,  Me or wife seen none, but all my favorite stars where still there
don’t have data logging debugged yet
But visual spikes did appear last night, AND my PBR station was hard to pull in (always a good indication something’s up)

Baseline noise +/- 4
Spiked to +18, 14, 11, then settled back to baseline, ~ 3hrs later, spiked to -14, -11, then back to baseline.  So an absolute swing of 21.   .122mGauss/bit * 21 =  ~ 2.6mGauss

Kinda cracks me up, in my old life a near perfect magnetic field at 1.5T was 1.5T+/- 500mGauss, (spec was +/- 2Gauss), that cal took about 30hrs! 

[shooter]

SW still kickin my butt, BUT
I got hardware 

cleaned up the test bed, still need the battery box and software controlled "turntable" base.

[DummyLoad]

beta test this...

https://www.pikearms.com/catalog/product/00433


  


--pete

[shooter]

 
they ship to Michigan!!
once I get my drone tracker up n working, i'll need one of those  , although, I was thinking more along the lines of collimated ghz pulsed RF, less brass I gotta clean before buggin out 

[shooter]

yippyskippy, beat the code gremlins 

 464 bytes, most I hacked, but I can sample the earths magnetic field to 4 milli gauss, sense a < 1 degree shift, and store anomies > 3 degrees 

guessing it took 100's of thousands of bytes to type ascii code here    

[pompeiisneaks]

Now you've got me wanting to share my latest returned hobby.  Homebrewing beer.  I have built a controller with the raspberry Pi to control an electric brewing system (This is my second.  My first was someone elses arduino code back in like 2005)  Here are pics:

( man to make it viewable I had to scale it down so small it's almost not )

[shooter]

Nice!
I was thinking of switching to RasPI, but I'm just to old to re-learn a new language!!

someone elses arduino code

I always start there  , just like in tube amps, the best start is someone else's proven design, then hack it up for your use.

[pompeiisneaks]

Nice!
I was thinking of switching to RasPI, but I'm just to old to re-learn a new language!!

someone elses arduino code

I always start there  , just like in tube amps, the best start is someone else's proven design, then hack it up for your use.

Yeah this time I'm writing it, but i'm a coder too, and getting a lot better at python.

~Phil

[shooter]

I just write what I needed for work, small .bat files, Vbasic macros etc.
got pretty good at assembly code, MASM in the Commodore 64 days.
I tried python, got hello world n a couple simple pop-ups, but then I went to the "next" lesson and wacked the operating software 
so it's back to Pbasic.  I'm more a hardware guy and use SW when I have to