Exciting to hear you're slowly making progress! I'm assuming from looking at it that the camera is not weatherproof, is your plan to have it inside through the window or to weatherproof it in some way (or do nothing and hope for the best)?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yea it seems the rpi4 has the 20pin connector.

It's a shame. Don't know if it was a last minute decision to change the connectors on the rpi5, but the camera3 came out in early 2023, and the rpi5 came out later in 2023. You'd have thought they would've release the camera with some thought into compatibility, maybe have both types of cables in there? I don't know.

Yeah at least there's some progress lol. Got the Image Recognition up and running on my laptop to test it out (on their basic pre trained models) and it's pretty cool how it all works with a live video feed. Got me pretty excited lol. All it took was 4 lines of Python!

I actually hadn't thought about weather proofing at all, probably because the door we'd have it installed at is under quite a large canopy, and so rain doesn't get in (there's sort of a retaining wall right in front of the canopy as well so sideways rain isn't really an issue either). But it's actually an interesting thought. It seems that there are a couple of weather proof housings on the market for the rpi cams though, if I need to go down that route. Also the plan is to have it on the underside of the top of the cat flap body (if that makes sense lol) and I plan to 3d print a bit of a shroud for it, so hopefully that'll help protect it Abit as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If it were me I'd probably just leave it and hope it's OK rather than get a weatherproof cover 😄.

I'm away from home but seriously considering setting up a driveway camera with image recognition once I'm home and can get parts. Mostly becase it sounds cool 😆.

So it's to stop the cat if they are holding a mouse, right? How does the "stopping" bit work?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I’m away from home but seriously considering setting up a driveway camera with image recognition once I’m home and can get parts. Mostly becase it sounds cool

Yeah, I want to setup some POE wired Security cameras around the house, but it's going to be too much work as the house is made of concrete blocks and bricks, and its a 2storey, so running the cabling through the ceiling space and out the soffit is not an option.

So it’s to stop the cat if they are holding a mouse, right? How does the “stopping” bit work?

Yeap exactly. I was initially thinking of triggering an electromagnet, but have since swung towards a "push/pull" linear solenoid actuator, which would physically block the door from opening. The reason I'm leaning towards the solenoid is that it would give me the flexibility to configure to either a "normally locked" or "normally unlocked" state (when no power is applied), plus I wouldn't have to think about how strong of an electromagnet is needed (and the increasing power requirements for it).