Computer Controlled Lawn Defender

13 Comments


I found this thanks to [Mark Frauenfelder] on BoingBoing. The ‘Waterhobo‘ is a computer controlled sprinkler that fires upon anyone who’s cutting across the owners lawn. The video is pretty amusing. An infrared camera is mounted up top, and the computer measures motion in the image to determine if it should start firing.

13 thoughts on “Computer Controlled Lawn Defender”

  1. Now the neighbor needs to ask him to build a second of these to put on the other side – full coverage of the grass between the houses = no more kid problems.

    Although if it was me I’d got with a standard PIR detector operating the camera record / sprinkler solenoids. Then I’d install some actual under-ground fast starting sprinkler heads in the center of the path. – Adjust their spray arc to hit about waist high on an adult and _thoroughly_ soak trespassers.

    Hide a switch or keypad nearby on either end of the grass to enable a 20 second “safe window” for when I need to walk through unsprayed and we’d be all set.

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  3. I’m with smilr, seem a bit over engineered for what a simple motion sensor could do (plus a add camera for watching latter). Now if it tracked “targets” keeping the stream on them, maybe even tracking multiple targets with more than one sprayer – that would be damned cool.

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  4. Your comments: Hahaha… that’s perfect! I should make one for my front porch. That’s way better than a doorbell, and just in time for halloween. A little red dye, and you have the scary blood shooting house on the end of the block!

    (btw, there’s an extra span tag in there making it gray starting with his last name)

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  6. sgt pyroman: The mailman normally comes around at about the same time every day. Figure out when he normally comes around and set a 1-hour safe window.

    Or, if it’s early morning, set a switch to detect when the mailbox has been opened, then have it turn itself on a few minutes later.

    Or, just leave it on. Might cut down on the bills you receive… >_>

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  9. I like it. Yeah, it could be much better, but it seems to work. What it really needs is some kind of green visible laser, and then it tracks targets with that for about 1 second, just for effect ;)

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  10. I definitely need something similar to keep my neighbor’s dogs quiet. He’s got 4 shelties that bark at ANYTHING, but they always shut up when they’re sprayed with a hose…. So instead of an IR camera, I just need to set up two mics on the fence, triangulate the location of the offending pooch, point and spray.

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