IoT Bird (Animal) Feeder

A motion-activated camera catches hungry animals that visit this IoT feeder


IoT Bird (and Squirrel) Feeder with Motion Sensor-Activated Camera


Built this IoT bird feeder by varying a design provided by the Ruiz Brothers and Liz Clark at Adafruit. If you have purused any of my other electronics projects, you know that I like to use wood instead of 3D printing for my enclosures. For my variation on this project, I used some scrap pieces of redwood. The electronics, which includes an RP2350 Pico 2W, motion sensor, OV5640 camera breakout with SD card reader/writer, and a 2.7A LiPo battery, sits inside a hollowed-out section in the back of the feeder. Through holes accomodate the camera and motion sensor. When it senses motion, camera takes a picture which is uploaded to AdafruitIO and written to the onboard SD card. Since this design is not weather-proof I strap it to my deck railing (just in case a rambunctious squirrel tries to tip it over). I can easily get several hundred pictures a day, like the examples below. To see a "live" shot of the feeder's most-recent capture, visit my feedercam dashboard.

Pictures of the IoT bird feeder (left-to-right): (1) Feeder from the front. You can see the holes for the camera (smaller top hole) and motion sensor (larger bottom hole). I used a jam jar lid that I glued to the feeder with carpet tape to hold the birdseed. (2) Animal-view of the feeder. (3) Back of the feeder with electronics compartment cover installed. I used a piece of 1/4 inch veneer and two window screen clasps to cover the hole that contains the electronics. (4) Back of the feeder with electronics cover removed. I used a piece of soft packing foam to (gently) hold the electronics in-place in the compartment.
Some animals caught feeding at my IoT feeder (clockwise from top-left): (1) A beautiful Cardinal. (2) A nice looking Blue Jay. (3) A pair of squirrels are regular visitors to my IoT feeder. This little guy will dine for more than 30 minutes at a time. (4) Sometimes my squirrel visitors will position themselves such that they "moon" my feeder camera. I have hundreds of such squirrel perspectives.