EcoArt Intent – AshleyD
- Bird Bath House and Garden Irrigator
This project involves building Birdhouses that use sensors to know when a bird is sitting on the perch of the birdhouse then fill the bowl below with water for the birds and the plants below.
- Concept: This project is about re-creating Matthew Mazzotta’s Cloud House project on a much smaller scale. The project involves the same general idea as the cloud house only instead of a large building for people to sit in I’d like to create bird houses based on the same general idea. These bird houses would come in three different shapes a typical birdhouse, a more round birdhouse, and a polygon birdhouse. There is also a small half-bowl, with holes, in the front of each birdhouse which will fill with water when the birds sit on the perch. Each would have a small hole and a perch for the birds to sit on and go into. Once the birds sit on the perch this would then activate a pressure sensor that is attached to a microcontroller. Once the pressure sensor is activated the bowl in the front of the birdhouse will fill completely with water allowing the birds to drink and bathe in the water.
The small holes in the bottom of the bowls allow small amounts of water to drain from the bowl and drip down onto the plants below. For the water to fill there will be a small water pump attached to the microcontroller that will feed out into the bowl. There would also be a water level sensor to stop the water from overflowing the bowl. The whole system would easily be powered by a small solar panel on the top of the bird houses.
Another aspect of this project would be to build a mobile application that allows the user to know how many times their plants have been watered for the day. They would then be able to stop the water flow, via a wifi signal, for the day to prevent the plant from being overwatered.
- Materials: Adafruit Pro Trinket (9.95$), Lightobject EWP-7L9 Mini DC Water Pump (8.95$), Force Sensitive Resistor (5.95$), Water Level Sensor Depth of Detection Water Sensor (2.99$), Wifi Reciever (3.45$), 5v Solar Panel (7.99$), Wood materials (Roughly 10$ per house), Bowl (1.00$ per house). Time to build, about 2 days per house from start to finish working about 3 hours a day. The cost to pay myself would be about 48$ per house at 8$ per hour. Totaling each house to about 98.28$. This cost could easily be cut by going to mass producers for products and getting more product at a cheaper price per unit.
2 thoughts on “EcoArt Intent – AshleyD”
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I like the idea of using sensors to keep track of the birds interaction with your house. I think it would be cool if you implemented an alert system that let the user know when there a was a bird in it. I enjoy watching birds build nests but don’t always have time to wait around for them to show up. This could be made even cooler if there was a small motion activated camera insdie of it so that you could record its nest building process and its eggs hatching.
Concept:
I think that this is a pretty cool idea, I like how it would benefit the birds and the plants. I am wondering where the original source of water would be— What is filling up the bowl? The mobile aspect of it is an interesting idea as well.
Design:
Your visual gives a good idea of what the design would look like. I like the traditional bird house shape with the added water unit.
Technical:
There is certainly a good amount of tech involved in this project. I am interested in how the electronics would be protected from water and the other elements.
Audience:
I could see the audience being really anyone who likes birds, or anyone who wants to bring birds into their yard. Also leaning towards a younger crowd with all the electronics aspects and mobile ability.
Creativity:
I think it is interesting that this is based on the cloud house. I really like the creative decision to adapt this idea to a small scale bird house. Bringing this idea into a more constructive context.