Raspberry Pi Forums

I have been having problems with either a cat or a fox fouling my lawn.
I have used my Raspberry Pi to set up a web cam using Motion to detect and take pictures and have been able to see both foxes and cats in the garden (although I haven't caught them in the act yet).
I have used the web cam in conjunction with a stand alone PIR Security light and that seems to act as a deterrent at night the animals skirting the illuminated area.
I have also configured motion to send me an email and a text when movement is detected, thanks to others on this forum.
I would now like motion to play a sound when movement is detected (a dog barking).
I have tried a number of music players (moc, vlc and mpg123) to play an mp3 triggered by motion but have been unsuccessful.
I can get the players to work (well not mpg123) from the command line but not from motion.
Any help would be appreciated but please be aware I am a complete novice.

Thank you

Carol

You want to build one of these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxBa5bQfTGc

Obviously using paint-balls on a defenceless animal would be a bad idea and probably illegal, but a water pistol version is probably possible and humane.

Carol, I'm looking to do something similar, would love to hear the steps you took to get as far as you have so far.

elcucuy wrote:Carol, I'm looking to do something similar, would love to hear the steps you took to get as far as you have so far.

https://github.com/scottgarner/BeetBox

Saw this, may be able to leverage code to look at one motion sensor instead of six touch sensors.

A water pistol will not be enough here, and neither will audio samples.

It's in the cat's nature to defy human intelligence and technology. The cat will not be fooled for long, or even at all, and might start agitating you even more by dropping dead birds on your lawn.

My advice.. Add one more key element which cats cannot ignore. Use the pi to drive a relay-mounted laser pointer on your target area, and THEN let rip with the water pistol.

LEAVE NOTHING TO CHANCE.

P.S. interested to hear if this will also take care of the foxes.
P.P.S. check if your neighbour is not already pointing laser pointers at your lawn

Dave Driesen
Linux dev and oldskool elite

Cats dont normally foul lawns, flower or vegetable beds is more their choice, preferably freshly dug.
Foxes are best dealt with by a trap and car ride.

I managed to get the system working by not running motion in daemon but manually starting it as root (sudo motion).By looking at the task manager I found that when starting in daemon it runs 'motion' as the user.

Before that I had tried giving ' motion ' audio and video permissions but still couldn't get it to play the sound clip.

Having got the system working I plugged a vhf transmitter into the audio output socket of the PI and played the output via a transistor radio to boost the volume.I was also able to tune in another radio indoors so I could monitor when motion was detected.

Net result is that we found we had cats,foxes and a hedge-hog in the garden.

The fouling has stopped but I think that is probably because of the low level security lights I set up to enable the camera to see at night, when most activity takes place, rather than the playing of the sound effect (barking dog).

I have now removed the camera set up but left the lights and there has been no further fouling.

It was fun getting the system up and running and I learnt a lot about the PI and Debian.

I am currently using the PI with motion and two cameras as a home security system.
When motion is detected it sends me an email which in turn sends me a text and also uploads the pictures taken to dropbox.

Many thanks to all the contributors to this and other forums who have enabled me to get this far.

I would still appreciate any information to enable the original project to run in daemon mode or perhaps advising how to run motion as root when it boots in daemon mode.

Again many thanks for all your help.

Carol




I have now remo

aTao wrote:Cats dont normally foul lawns, flower or vegetable beds is more their choice, preferably freshly dug.
Foxes are best dealt with by a trap and car ride.

I wish someone would tell the cats near us to stop using our lawn