Scare some rabbits using Arduino?

Projects General Guidance
1

I’m hoping to find out if it’s possible to do this by using Arduino and a model car.
We have a REAL problem with rabbits in our garden. They absolutely eat EVERYTHING in our garden and dig it up. They destroy all the vegetables we try to grow and people say that the only way to control the is to shoot them. I’m not particularly happy about doing this but I do know that they are very timid and hate movement and noise.
Would it be possible to program Arduino to control a hacked RC model car /truck to follow a certain path around the garden at set intervals (or randomly) throughout the night? I would just need to to be basic - move 3 meters forward, then 4 meters to 90 degrees, 8 meters at 270 degrees etc.
I just want to scare them so they don’t come into the garden and this should do it.

I know this is a weird potential project but is this possible using Arduino?

2

You have no idea how difficult that actually is. It's anything but basic.

Can you set up a track of some kind for the vehicle to run on or follow?

3

Maybe something like this inductively guided robot?

4

fight biology with biology. Rent a dog or offer a dog caring service for your neighbours (if you want to get paid for it ...)

5

That concept will drift away from its pattern and end up facing a tree, a fence,....

6

Can’t use a track - lawn is mowed regularly. Something that’s 10cm under the lawn may be do-able.
Can’t use a dog neighbours wouldn’t appreciate a dog barking in the garden at all hours of the night anyway!

7

Maybe a few illuminated ‘scare things’ that make a noise - placed in critical locations.

Solar charged, just enough random noise and light/motion to get the bunnies on their way.

8

At first the OP may want to do some experiments to see if they can detect the rabbits.

I use 2 AMG8833's to detect small, medium, and large animals. My definition of small, medium, large is so that I can discriminate the large animals and snap an infrared image.

KNN ML can be used on a ESP32WROOM.

I send the image to a Raspberry Pi for processing.

Also, TensorFlow could be used to detect rabbits. <<< The best option.

Once you are able to discern rabbits you can go about adding in scare tactics.

9

Ok, what I’ve done already:
I’ve bought 2 all weather speakers that are very loud and have a SD card input. I’ve loaded the cards with around 100 random sounds - foxes, owls, dogs, people talking, walking on pebbles, gunshots, babies crying etc. Edited all the samples so they all have 2 or 3 minutes silence at the ends. The speakers then play the samples independently and randomly all night.
Each speaker is set in various places at opposite ends of the garden.
Initially, for a couple of weeks, we found that the sounds scared the crap out of them and they stayed away but slowly we noticed little bits of damage coming back and a couple of weeks after that, the noises are pretty much ignored.

Pest control people have set traps to catch them but not one has been caught and they say that the only thing left is to shoot and kill but I’m desperate to not go down that route.

Any ideas you have would be appreciated but as you can see I’ve tried a few things but these things learn and unless there’s a physical something moving around or heading in their direction, they eventually just ignore it.

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10

vs

You see the absurdity in your comments?

Ask @Idahowalker if he has a good proposal for an IR camera, analyse the stream for "small animals" (I would use a Jetson NANO) and only start barking when it is necessary. If you want, let your lawn mower robot target to the heat source. In idle let him return to the charging point.

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11

No absurdity. The speakers are much quieter than a dog barking!
Not sure what lawn mower robot you’re taking about, I never mentioned one.

It’s ok guys, I was just hoping that there might be a simple technology-based solution but I can see that there probably isn’t.

12

Small wonder.

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13

Ultrasonic (with flashlight) repelent ?
for rabbits one with +/- 33kHz .

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norabbit
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15

Your distances are a bit small for it but consider putting a GPS on the vehicle for navigation.

16

Rabbits are oddly clever and may learn that your car is not a threat . Have you looked at what others do .

anyhow … before spending a lot of effort building something stay up a couple of nights and see if driving a rc randomly does the job

Have a look at how automatic lawnmowers works - they often have a wire around the perimeter of the lawn to constrain its movement .

17

This. I suspect that they'll get used to your car soon enough. Perhaps if you could get it to chase them it might be different, but that's a much trickier project.

18

I think most people around here just shoot them. Seems a bit of a sport around here actually. I’m probably the only idiot who is hesitating to go down that route.
The ultrasonic ‘scarers’ have pretty poor reviews on Amazon but I can see that being pretty effective IF you could find the right frequency that upsets them! I have no idea how to determine that..

19

A friend of mine used to own www.rabbitzapper.com, which would have been perfect for this. He passed away, but the concept was a smart electric fence that was low to the ground (like around part of your garden) and off until a rabbit touched it, then it zapped them with a few thousand volts. It worked but he had a power consumption problem that made it difficult to run from batteries, which was a desired feature.

Anyway, have you considered an electric fence (a regular one) low enough to step over? They make weak ones for small animals.

20

Strangely enough, we were talking about this type of just this morning! We have 2 fences for cattle and sheep on the other side but we’re wondering about adapting this sort of thing for the critters! I’ll take a look now, thanks for the link.

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