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Final Project

Brainstorming

I’ve always enjoyed spotting birds out on hikes, walks, and outside my window, but I’m not committed enough to the hobby to go bird watching. For my final project, I’m planning on making a birdhouse that will hang from a tree outside my window, and capture bird calls + environmental patterns, like trees and clouds moving, and create some sort of visual or audio display with it. The display will ideally be live, so you can experience an artistic rendition of the birds and the environment that they’re in from your desk.

Design

Structure

I made some sketches of what the design could potentailly look like. I wanted to veer from the classic “house” shape (why should birds have to live in human houses?!), and opted for a more natural design. I was inspired by hanging rice paper lamps and hanging, weaved bird nests that some species create.

Daniel also showed me birdhouse designs from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, which were good examples of beautiful but functional birdhouses.

bird bird

I was also inspired by organic lamp designs that I saw on Pinterest. The teardrop shapes and holes reminded me of a bird nesting site that I saw in Puerto Rico, where birds could enter through small holes.

lamp lamp
lamp lamp

Visual/audio display

I still need to brainstorm on specific algorithms to use, but I wanted to write something that combines bird calls and repeating environmental patterns, like leaves and clouds, into a display. I’ve been seeing a lot of Touchdesigner projects on Instagram recently, so I will explore exporting collected data there. I’ll also use BirdNET or some other species classification model to make the display behave differently depending on the species.

Electronics

Here are some of the electronics components I was thining of including

  • Raspberry Pi for coordinating cameras, processing video, and transferring data
  • Solar panels on top to recharge the boards
  • Wind power generation?

Material

  • The birdhouse needs to be light enough to hang from the tree, but heavy enough that it doesn’t swing or get displaced in the wind
  • It would be cool to use a clear/more transulent material, like resin print (check for a material that can withstand UV)
  • Weight on the bottom to prevent swinging
  • Waterproof on top, in case it rains

Progress

Week 1

For the week 1 assignment, I sketched out potential birdhouse designs and created a CAD design for it using a ChatGPT prompt. More details on are the Week 1 page.

bird

Week 5

I thought about functionality while doing electronic design, since I wanted to start on the central controller for my project.

  • Could have 3 XIAO ESP32S3 SENSEs streaming at once, but i wanted to have one central processor
    • 2 rooftop XIAOs process image data on board
    • Roof cameras can have a lower frame rate
  • What is streamed
    • Video from main xiao
    • Processed video data from 2 rooftop xiaos
    • Audio
    • Food level indicator
    • Battery indicator

Current design

  • XIAO ESP32S3 Sense (113991115) - three controllers + camera, one is central
  • VL53L1X ToF breakout (3415) - measure bird food level
  • VL53L5CX 8×8 ToF breakout (3417) - detect birds at entrance
  • Shared regulated 5 V supply - power all 3 xiaos
  • Battery voltage monitor circuit - monitor battery status

Main concerns

  • Power draw (how often will I have to switch the battery)
    • Solar panel to charge battery?
  • Streaming - will there be too much data to stream at the FPS that I want?
print

Week 6

I milled the central controller from last week and tested the ToF sensor -> activate camera pipeline. Right now, it’s just powered through the USB-C port, but I want to switch to using batteries later on. I also tested the camera streaming through WiFi, which works when viewing through an HTTP server.

I went to office hours and Alan recommended this for powering the board through BAT

  • these components for the batteries

  • EBL rechargeable batteries (NiMh aaa batteries)

  • battery charger (this is the battery charger ic onboard xiao esp32s3 sense board)

  • for the aaa batteries it’d be 3* 1.2V = 3.6v

    • Want at least 3.7V based on the datasheet, so change to BAT_VIN

  • need to cut ahole under the XIAO to access these pins, since they’re on the underside

  • 3 batteries

    • 3 AAA batteries - 1.5V each
    • nimh batteries
      • rechargeable
      • pretty safe
      • probably these if i order off amazon
    • possible to use these with the on-board charger
    • would connect to BAT_VIN
      • wouldn’t use 5V then
      • probably
      • it kinda assumes a lithium battery
    • can get off the shelf connector for AAAs
      • 3 battery holder
      • add connectors on that side
      • figure out how to mount battery pack