I’m brand new with building robots, so please excuse my ignorance here: I’m in the pest control industry and we occasionally have rats that are very “trap-shy,” meaning they can be surrounded by rat traps, but never actually go to them because they or other rats they’ve seen have had bad experiences with them in the past. So we’ll essentially catch all the dumb rats, then spend 6+ weeks trying to catch the “smart” rat.
My solution is I want to design a system where I have remote control over a mounted co2 powered bb gun that I can aim and fire via the internet. My rough plan so far is a Pi 4 powered system with a 2-stack adafruit driver setup to power 3 nema 17 stepper motors (400 steps for increased precision). 1 motor will turn the entire platform 360 degrees, the other will control vertical tilt of the gun, then the other will operate a screw to squeeze the trigger. However, where I’m having issues is figuring out a system to have a live feed that I can see through a scope to shoot the rats remotely online. I need to be able to have something set up that has virtually no latency so I can take advantage of shots when they appear without having to buffer. Is this capable over wifi, or would I have to ethernet it in? wiring up a camera directly into the raspberry pi is easy enough, but the issue is mounting that camera precisely to see through a scope and also be able to have IR capability as these shots would be in the dead of night. I’ve also wondered if I can buy a digital scope and hard-wire it into the video slot of the PI too?
I’ve been researching for about 6 hours today and want to know if I’m wasting my time chasing this or if this is an idea that will actually work as well as I’d need it to. Any ideas on how I could figure out the live-feed via scope that can be reliable and accurate would be extremely helpful.
Sounds like you want to create a remote turrent? Since we don’t want to take sides, we’ll have to contact the smart rats to see if they want help developing counter-measures. Joke aside, cannot give much advice in this application yet, so perhaps others from the community might offer some insight. Some brainstorming:
A near-zero latency for cameras is certainly possible, and there are articles where people have pursued minimizing latency on a Pi like:
A Pi might actually be a bit overkill (programming a camera feed with controls in a single interface) in that you can likely get away with a simpler approach by separating the camera from the controls and using a microcontroller for the position input. There are IR cameras available which plug into a Pi (either directly via the camera header or USB). Regarding setting the camera up with a scope, it seems to be an issue of proper placement and alignment moreso than anything. There are several parts to this project, which seem to require mechanical and programming skills:
High accuracy and high speed custom-made stepper-motor driven pan and tilt system able to handle the weight of a BB gun
High speed, low latency IR camera with a feed from the scope which can be viewed remotely
User interface for the pan/tilt from a remote location
Legality of implementing what some might be consider a remote turret.
I am also doing the same project for my parent’s crawl space. They live near a creek and are plagued with nighttime visitors into their main house. I have not started building, but I have decided to use a cheap web-cam which connects directly to a smartphone, a laser which will be sighted into a .22 pellet pistol, and will simply use servos with 270 degree orientation. I will limit range to 5-10 yards. One limitation is the night vision of the $30 HD camera, I will probably need to add some magnification. However, by using a separate camera and laser, there will be a wider field of view. I will be doing extensive testing to ensure that this system can operate in a humane fashion and hit a dime size area at the ranges required. I will also do extensive testing without ammo to ensure that the system is quiet/fast enough to have a good chance of operating successfully. I am hoping to use a pistol with a magazine and be able to achieve 7 shots before needing to reset. I will use an Arduino controller and have the webcam completely separate.
I suspect motor noise and latency will also be issues, but reviewing ratting videos online it looks like using baits is the way to go. So you will likely have to be consciously monitoring during specific times. Probably will need to do some habituation of the turret to the rats. Controlling over wifi is probably OK, but over internet might be hard to be real-time. I will use WIFI for video and radio control directly to the microprocessor for firing directly to the controller. That way as long as the video is close and the rat is paused near some bait, the firing mechanism should be real-time.
