The BirdHub

Designing and manufacturing a smart bird-feeder that collects bird and atmospheric data

User: Local Ornithologists
Role: Mechanical Design Lead - Interviewer

- The Problem -

Local ornithologists often struggle to gather accurate and unaffected data due to weather conditions and monetary restraints.

- The Solution -

The BirdHub - A sustainable smart bird-feeder with atmospheric and bird data collection, live imaging, predator prevention, and an automatic mechanical food dispenser

Background

In the course Principles of Engineering, the final project was to create a product that integrates mechanical, electrical, and software engineering. My team and I designed a "smart" bird-house which provides birds with food, regulated shelter, and predatory defense through a standalone, sustainably-powered bird feeder that updates human users on environmental conditions, bird visits, and system efficiency. We familiarized ourselves with sustainable design by building our very own solar panel that recharges the battery for the bird-feeder. This project not only strengthened my interdisciplinary engineering skills, but also my documentation skills. Here is the link to the final website with all of the documentation for this project.

User Research

The course Principle of Engineering mainly focuses on the design, integration, and manufacture of a product. But because our product is directly correlated with a specific user, I encouraged my team to conduct user research in order to optimize our design.

We interviewed 2 separate ornithologists that are each conducting research at separate universities. Using a discussion guide, we asked each scientists questions about their research focus and current obstacles they are facing. We also asked them to teach us about local birds since we were not familiar. Lastly, each user ranked on a scale from 1-10, what components they would like to see in the design of the bird-feeder.

After interviewing the ornithologists, we also researched our second user: local birds. We went through extensive observation and secondary research in order to familiarize ourselves with the local specimens and design the best birdhouse. We created portraits for each type of local bird, listing their size, unique features, and dietary needs.

Insights

As we spoke with the ornithologists and observed local birds, we composed a list of key insights that served as guiding principles to our design:

Predators, such as squirrels, pose a huge problem to ornithologist collecting data by scaring away birds, taking food, and potentially damaging sensors.
Birdhouses are not very helpful to scientist since the enclosed structure covers observational view of the birds.
Ornithologist struggle gathering data in the winter due to weather damage of sensors.

We took our insights and feedback from our users to create an effective tool in gathering bird data, explained below

Mechanical Components

Food Dispenser

The first iteration bird food dispenser consisted of a hopper top plate and a motorized dispenser wheel that when the openings aligned, food would be dispensed from the reservoir. After initial testing, we found that due to the low amount of feed dispensed, we needed to re-design. Our final bird food dispenser was an Archimedes screw that transported the bird food out of the food container and onto the front plate.

Enclosure Design

The birdhouse itself went through a couple of different designs. We started with a 5 x 5 x 8" birdhouse that incorporated all major aspects (hole size, volume, etc). After meeting with an ornithologist, we decided to change directions and build a bird feeder rather than birdhouse. Our final design was a more open house structure. All of the pieces were laser cut at Olin, assembled with wood-glue, and painted for aesthetics.

The Mount

We used wood to build the mount due to its natural appeal and biodegradability. The mount is made of a 4" x 4" x 8' wooden beam holding the bird feeder on one side with the solar panel on the top. For supporting the birdhouse, we used 2.5 inch thick plywood panels with a cutout at the beam on one end and rectangular supports under.

Electrical Components

Sensors

Camera

We used two main sensors on our bird-feeder. To gather atmospheric data, we implemented a temperature & humidity sensor from Adafruit. We also used a force sensitive resistor from Sparkfun to record information on bird weight--an important aspect to ornithologists. Both of the sensors were hooked up to a Teensy ++ 2.0 so all data collection and wireless transmission take place on the same microprocessor.

To incorporate motion detection, we used a TTL serial JPEG camera. This made our system more efficient by only dispensing food when a bird is detected. The camera also captures images and saves them to a MicroSD Card. The camera (as well as the servos for the food dispenser) were integrated using an Arduino Nano.

Solar Panel

For our off-grid power source, we built a 6V solar panel from scratch using poly-crystalline solar cells within a wooden and glass frame. We built an array of 24 cells in series in a 4 x 6 cell pattern. For every row of 6 cells, bypass diodes were soldered in parallel to prevent the current from sunlit cells to burn out shaded cells by providing a path around the bad cell.

Software Components

To interface with the FONA 800 on our Teensy ++ 2.0, we used the Adafruit FONA Arduino Library. To visualize the data we used Freeboard using dweet.io url as the datasource. Adafruit also provides a library for our camera to reliably detect motion and capture images. And finally to dispense food, we modified a standard servo motor to set up for continuous rotation and used the Servo.h library to detect for a value from motion detection, trigger the motion, and move for 3 seconds.

Fall 2018
Principles of Engineering
Olin College of Engineering
Team: Robert Barlow, Isa Blancett, Samantha Hoang, Christian Lichter

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