I am on a mission to disrupt the destructive little furry rabbits that are killing my lawn. The dream machine would be a rover that lived on a drive on charger like my rumba does and have some kind of detection system that sees the little bastards come onto my lawn either by motion or IR sensors etc. Once detected the rover would drive a pre programmed path or more sophisticated attack by using sensors to locate the fury little bugger and it would be chased off just by the rover driving towards it. I would love to mount a water canon or something just to make it more fun!! I have a pixihawk controller and the gps etc from a drone that I didn't end up building so I need to pick a base vehicle (lawn that is mowed weekly and is flat terrain) I am not sure how I would go about this. I can't sit up all night waiting for a dam rabbit. I need to make it run a patrol ever 15 min or on sensing something. Any suggestions on how this could be accomplished? My son is starting this fall in his second year of mechanical engineering and I think this would be a fun project for the two of us to work on together. I have a nice 3d printer to make parts and some time to tinker. Help me get Bugs Bunny off my Lawn!!
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Thanks for your detailed post. I will do some studying up. I have no hope for the Easter bunny. This is one of my back yard patrols. He has an older sibling as well so not much gets past these two. Here he is showing off the unlucky squirrel but has a few rabbits to show off as well.
HI Greg,
This sounds like a job for a sentry gun. There are quite a few projects out there. Here is one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QcfZGDvHU8
I crack up every time I watch this video - that's funny stuff. I want to build one with my son and his friends....:)he he.
Another:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxBa5bQfTGc
I'm sure the system will work if you have some lighting on the lawn.
I can imagine this would be a fun project.
Another option is a passive sensor (PIR) hooked up to an ultra sonic generator to generate a burst of ultra sound that startles the rabbit - would freak out the dogs as well......
I have a Wild Thumper 6WD chassis that is quite good for a project like this if you want to do it with a rover. It is a skid steer system and would manage your lawn quite well. I would think to trigger an auto mission on sensing movement - again a PIR triggering the auto mission.
The Thumper needs a controller that translates PWM from the RC to the drive system(miniature frequency converter) - the motors are normal DC geared drives. You will add the Pixhawk to instruct the controller using PWM. I'm running mine on an old APM2.5 board. Runs very well.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11056
A word of warning - if you get this right, there will not be another Easter visit at your place, bunnies are weird that way :)
Good luck.