Smart Garden Camera Trap

When tending a garden, you not only have to think about what the plants need to grow, but you also have to protect those precious plants from their natural "predators" - neighborhood animals that can really get in there and destroy the vegetation. For example, when I used to own a home with a yard, rabbits really loved getting in there and digging up any carrots underground, while the squirrels and birds would steal all the fruit off the trees, the deer would eat through all the leaves, and my dog would run around in the flowers and break all of their stems.

I wanted to create a system that could get rid of all of these various "pests" in a humane way that wouldn't damage them or the flowers. Unfortunately, there isn't a one size fits all solution: for example, while dog barks would scare rabbits, that wouldn't affect a dog, and spinning motion that scares squirrels probably wouldn't phase a large deer.

Therefore, I've trained up a neural net that can recognize 5 animals: deer, birds, dogs, squirrels, and rabbits. I've set up the Jetson Nano to be a smart camera trap by attaching a Raspberry Pi Camera, and I've added several components to it. The Nano can sit passive in the yard constantly identifying things, and if it recognizes one of the classes, it will react appropriately, like playing dog barking noises if it "sees" a deer. Now, you have a simple monitoring system that can protect your garden from several different animal species!