Hi!
Would a sound or motion sensor work better to capture a falling parakeet and trigger lights? I don’t think a pressure sensor would be good, they are not only very light, they also poop all night.
Here’s the situation: I have a couple rescue parakeets who get what’s called a “night-fright”, occurs infrequently, maybe every 8-12 weeks. Something spooks them, they’ll fall to the bottom of their sleeping cage with a very distinct THUD, then one or both will thrash around trying to find a safe place, hopelessly, because it is dark (top 1/3 of the cage is covered with a blanket for the night). The thrashing could potentially harm them. Nightlights are generally recommended for this by vets and the internet, but they aren’t working as well as I’d hoped.
I sleep lightly so the thud wakes me up and I can rush to turn on the lights. Sometimes I travel for work and the house-sitter might sleep through this. The faster I can turn on the lights, the safer they be.
Appreciate any recommendations for an appropriate sensor type! Thank you for reading :)
I can’t think of any sensor that won’t give you 8 million false alarms for each time it accurately detects the problem at hand.
If they never go to the bottom of the cage unless they fall, you could potentially but the bottom grate on load cells and tune it to tell the difference between poop falling and the full bird.
Thinking way outside the box, a camera running Frigate could probably be trained to recognize the the night-fright pattern and alert reliably.
Okay, thanks for the feedback. Calibration might be tough, I suppose I could measure poop but that then builds up over night (albeit very very light). I could simulate their fall by finding a ~30g weight I suppose.
I really thought the loud thud and thrashing would be enough to trigger a sound sensor, however, it seems sound sensors don’t really exist yet and we need to make them. Seems easy enough and a fun project.