Raspberry Pi-Powered Feeder Puts Pigeons' Intelligence to the Test
David Pride's food dispenser also features a motion-activated camera.
During quarantine, David Pride and company have spent a lot of time looking at their yard to see the quite diverse array of birds that appear. Aside from starlings, sparrows, blackbirds, and some that are too fast for him to quite identify, there’s a pigeon named Frank. As he seems to be the “boss bird” in this little domain, Pride decided to put his intelligence to the test with an automated, motion-activated feed dispenser.
As he describes in his original post, he’s not the first to study bird cognitive behavior, and thus had high hopes for food dispensing. The original version utilized a stepper-actuated flap to hold seeds inside a two-liter bottle, and a custom pigeon input pad to allow the bird to trigger the device. The whole thing was controlled by a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and a motor driver board, along with a 12V battery pack.
The problem with this was that the motor had to be powered at all times to keep the flap in place, or the weight of the seed had to be carefully balanced. Effectively, this meant that it dumped way too much food on many occasions. After going back to the drawing board, revision 2 now uses a water wheel-style seed dispenser, plus a window to let the birds see the little prizes inside. He’s also added a Raspberry Pi Camera Module running a motion detection script, which records three-minute videos any time it senses activity.
Hopefully this will mean some interesting and entertaining wildlife clips in the future. For now, you can watch a demo with the “SmartFrank3000” below!