Your Raspberry Pi Projects

HvRooyen said:
A few months ago new neighbours moved in - sort of. At least 5 dogs reside there permanently, and the people themselves only really stay there occasionally. Most of the time the dogs are bored, and bark through the night.
Enter the dog silencer:
A RPi, a relay board, a sound detector, an ultrasonic sound generator and the necessary speakers.
Some Python code triggers the sound cannon when noise is heard on that side of the house during the night, blasting the dogs with 120dB of 22kHz sound.
Problem solved.
Click to expand...

Serious question, do you think this is legal? I'm thinking of building something like this.
 
V1rus said:
Serious question, do you think this is legal? I'm thinking of building something like this.
Click to expand...

Better than throwing a firecracker over the wall, and if the ****ing owner is too lazy to control his dog what other option do you have at 3:00am in the morning?
 
Must admit I never really thought of the legal issues - it was either this or lobbing valium laced worsies over the fence every evening. Anyway, here goes:
Municipal bylaws regarding nuisance/noise - 22kHz cannot be heard by humans, on the other hand the dog can...
SPCA / cruelty to the dogs: I initially tested the speakers on my own dog, to check that everything worked as advertised. While he certainly did not enjoy it (he sort of flinched a bit), he was obviously not in distress. The site I bought the ultrasonic equipment from actually indicated that the system does not send out a continuous signal "to prevent habituation", which I think confirms the signal is pretty benign. I also agree that if shock collars and dog whistles are acceptable then I cannot see this not being.
There is a similar system available in SA that supposedly keeps birds away - that seems legal as well.
 
I had a circuit on my computer, I will need to search through the digital crud to find it, but essentially it was a heavy duty ultrasonic generator, to induce nausea/disorientation on any potential burglar in your house or car, along the lines of this: Ultrasonic I had the circuit from virtually back in the '90s, but will hopefully find it and test it out now that I have a bit more time available.

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Similar units though not ultrasonic, were successfully used to prevent pirate attacks in the Somali area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon

i would love to get hold of the legendary Brown Note :D
 
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patrick123 said:
I had a circuit on my computer, I will need to search through the digital crud to find it, but essentially it was a heavy duty ultrasonic generator, to induce nausea/disorientation on any potential burglar in your house or car, along the lines of this: Ultrasonic I had the circuit from virtually back in the '90s, but will hopefully find it and test it out now that I have a bit more time available.

-----------------
Similar units though not ultrasonic, were successfully used to prevent pirate attacks in the Somali area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon

i would love to get hold of the legendary Brown Note :D
Click to expand...

I would love to get my hands on a sound weapon like that - I am currently looking into multiple options to further fortify my house against burglars (turret gun, anyone?). Any idea of cost?

In my experience the biggest problem with creating an ultrasonic system was obtaining (piezo) speakers that are capable of emitting such a high frequency (which is why I imported them). The circuit is apparently easily made using a thing called a 555 Timer IC. Apparently Arduinos can also generate pretty high frequencies, but the RPi not. As I was able to buy the sound generator from the same place as the speakers (made for each other), I took the easy route and just used the RPi to activate the whole system when it sensed a noise.
 
My son has put together a solution for my son-in-law for cutting wire at regular intervals. Right now the factory requires a person to measure out a length of wire then cut it with tin snips, measure out another length, etc. They easily do 100s a day. It's time consuming and boring. The solution involves an Arduino, keypad, LCD screen, stepper motor to feed the wire and solenoid valve to operate the pneumatic cutter.
The LCD prompts the user to enter the number of wires and the length of each on the keypad and they hit * to start cutting. The Arduino then fires up the stepper to measure out the exact length of wire using a rubber roller system, stops it, fires the pneumatic cutter and measures the next etc. I'll post images and project details as soon as we've completed assembly.
Right now it's all firing well and just needs to be assembled on the production line. We need to build a good box for the electronics as well - we'll probably use the laser cutter and ply for that so we can build something custom size wise.
 
HvRooyen said:
A few months ago new neighbours moved in - sort of. At least 5 dogs reside there permanently, and the people themselves only really stay there occasionally. Most of the time the dogs are bored, and bark through the night.
Enter the dog silencer:
A RPi, a relay board, a sound detector, an ultrasonic sound generator and the necessary speakers.
Some Python code triggers the sound cannon when noise is heard on that side of the house during the night, blasting the dogs with 120dB of 22kHz sound.
Problem solved.
Click to expand...

are there no suppliers for the ultra sound generator in SA?
 
JetsetWilly said:
My son has put together a solution for my son-in-law for cutting wire at regular intervals. Right now the factory requires a person to measure out a length of wire then cut it with tin snips, measure out another length, etc. They easily do 100s a day. It's time consuming and boring. The solution involves an Arduino, keypad, LCD screen, stepper motor to feed the wire and solenoid valve to operate the pneumatic cutter.
The LCD prompts the user to enter the number of wires and the length of each on the keypad and they hit * to start cutting. The Arduino then fires up the stepper to measure out the exact length of wire using a rubber roller system, stops it, fires the pneumatic cutter and measures the next etc. I'll post images and project details as soon as we've completed assembly.
Right now it's all firing well and just needs to be assembled on the production line. We need to build a good box for the electronics as well - we'll probably use the laser cutter and ply for that so we can build something custom size wise.
Click to expand...

Cool, hardware stores could use that as well. Considered using a 3d Printer for the box?
 
Urist said:
Cool, hardware stores could use that as well. Considered using a 3d Printer for the box?
Click to expand...

Yeah, the laser cutter is just so quick and painless though. We prefer using wood where it can be used.
 
HvRooyen said:
I would love to get my hands on a sound weapon like that - I am currently looking into multiple options to further fortify my house against burglars (turret gun, anyone?). Any idea of cost?

In my experience the biggest problem with creating an ultrasonic system was obtaining (piezo) speakers that are capable of emitting such a high frequency (which is why I imported them). The circuit is apparently easily made using a thing called a 555 Timer IC. Apparently Arduinos can also generate pretty high frequencies, but the RPi not. As I was able to buy the sound generator from the same place as the speakers (made for each other), I took the easy route and just used the RPi to activate the whole system when it sensed a noise.
Click to expand...

Yep, the speakers are the most important part.

Here is a zip of some ultrasonic plans and circuits. http://onyxsa.co.za/other/dogs.zip
 
HvRooyen said:
Unfortunately no single link for the system.
Hardware:
(RPi, power supply and SD card - duh.)
(Some wire, a terminal block, some soldering, a nice box to put it all in)
Thermistor
Relay board - adapt as needed (note this relay board is GPIO low active). I only use 2 of the relays: one for the element and one for the water pump.

Note that although the RPi relay can handle 230V, it cannot handle the current draw of a geyser element. For this I enlisted the help of an electrician, who installed a more substantial relay. In other words, the small relay on the RPi just triggers a larger relay that directly controls the equipment. This has the added benefit of making all the wiring above board from a certification perspective.

Software was done by [MENTION=98970]Cor Cronje[/MENTION] and can be found at BitBucket. It is still a work in progress, but works a charm. I intend expanding it to warn of element / pump malfunctions, as well as home automation integration. We will certainly appreciate any constructive comments here.
Click to expand...
Awesome. Do you perhaps have instructions on how to install the thermistor into your geyser?
 
christsim said:
Awesome. Do you perhaps have instructions on how to install the thermistor into your geyser?
Click to expand...

The electrician managed that part for me, but based on what we discussed and the old parts that he gave me:
If you look at images on Google for geyser thermostats, they all have a temperature sensing element which mostly consists of a long copper (or similar) tube with a temperature sensing element incorporated into that. These tubes fit into a slightly larger tube in the geyser, where they can measure the temperature without being in direct contact with the water. The 18b20 temperature sensor I linked to will fit into this - I suspect the electrician "sommer" threaded the thing in as far as it would go.
 
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My frustration took over with Youtube and the MiBox after wanting to stream some music videos and the level of ads in music videos are ridiculous. So I decided to whip out the spare Raspberry Pi I had laying around and deploy Pi-Hole. Happy to say this is one epic piece of software, been running smooth without hickups and completely blocking ads on all my devices at home.

Iv already placed the order for the Pi Zero W which I will then run this from rather than utilising a Pi 3 for this task.

Screenshot 2018-07-08 at 17.14.59.jpg
 
Michaelmw said:
My frustration took over with Youtube and the MiBox after wanting to stream some music videos and the level of ads in music videos are ridiculous. So I decided to whip out the spare Raspberry Pi I had laying around and deploy Pi-Hole. Happy to say this is one epic piece of software, been running smooth without hickups and completely blocking ads on all my devices at home.

Iv already placed the order for the Pi Zero W which I will then run this from rather than utilising a Pi 3 for this task.

Click to expand...

"Completely" ?
There are still Youtube ads that sneak throught though, amirite ?
I am redoing my Pi.Hole in hopes it works better.. if you say "Completely"
 
Anthro said:
"Completely" ?
There are still Youtube ads that sneak throught though, amirite ?
I am redoing my Pi.Hole in hopes it works better.. if you say "Completely"
Click to expand...

Iv opened many YouTube videos to test this and its blocked every single one thus far, even the ads that are placed mid way into videos (yellow indicator in the video). I’m sure some new ones will sneak in from time to time however Iv yet to come across a single ad since. Playing music playlists used to be the worst however playlists are playing non interrupted now.

Wouldn’t take the word completely to heart but thus far Iv had none.
 
Michaelmw said:
Iv opened many YouTube videos to test this and its blocked every single one thus far, even the ads that are placed mid way into videos (yellow indicator in the video). I’m sure some new ones will sneak in from time to time however Iv yet to come across a single ad since. Playing music playlists used to be the worst however playlists are playing non interrupted now.

Wouldn’t take the word completely to heart but thus far Iv had none.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick reply.. and you are using vanilla lists?
 
Anthro said:
Thanks for the quick reply.. and you are using vanilla lists?
Click to expand...

No problems :)

I am indeed, haven’t explored much from the standard settings either, Iv only whitelisted MyBB, SAGamer, DSTV Now (Incase anything causes an issue) and Carbonite from the settings.
 
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