Engineer Makes an AI Camera Sprinkler to Keep People Off His Lawn

To keep people from walking on his lawn and inhibiting its growth, Inventor and YouTuber Ryder of the YouTube Channel Ryder Calm Down built a people-detecting smart camera rigged to a sprinkler system that would spray those who got too close.

Ryder explains that the city where he lives inexplicably removed a chunk of sidewalk from the front of his house, leaving only unsightly dirt.

"About a year ago the city dug up the sidewalk in front of my house and I'm not sure why," he says. "So now there is a whole bunch of dirt where the sidewalk used to be and people keep walking over top of it. I'm trying to plant grass, but it doesn't grow when people keep walking on it."

Rather than relying on a sign, Ryder decided to take a smart camera system and rig up a different kind of "solution."

As previously reported, Ryder had developed a artificial intelligence-powered camera in the past which he trained to recognize dogs and, once one was detected, yell compliments at it and its owner. That system was built on the Raspberry Pi camera and a Raspberry Pi, which worked together to analyze subjects using a pre-programmed machine learning system that was able to recognize about 80 different objects including people, cars, and dogs.

Ryder applied the same idea to a Wyze camera running custom firmware which he used to recognize a host of objects including people. When they were detected, it would activate a sprinkler that he believed would deter the people from walking on his growing grass.

"There is no teacher quite like fear," Ryder says, jokingly. "So I'm using artificial intelligence to turn my sprinkler on only when people walk on my lawn."

Is this solution ethical? No, and Ryder recognizes as much. He calls it a "highly unethical waste of his engineering degree."

"I made this for entertainment only. The people you see in the video, even the ones portrayed as the public, have all agreed to be in the video prior to filming," he writes in his video's description. "I wouldn't recommend you actually build anything like this yourself, I just wanted to make a video that I thought was entertaining."

Even though the solution isn't one he actually depoyed for obvious reasons, the application of machine learning through intelligent camera systems is still impressive and, of course, entertaining.

More of Ryder's inventions and videos can be found on his YouTube Channel.

#culture #technology #ai #aicamera #artificialintelligence #artificialintelligencecamera #objectrecognition #rydercalmdown

This AI Camera Yells Compliments at Dogs

Looking at photos of dogs and cats can apparently make you feel happier, and self-proclaimed "depressed millennial" Ryder of the YouTube Channel Ryder Calm Down decided photos weren't good enough and developed a camera that recognizes dogs and alerts him so he can spot them out the window.

As Gizmodo puts it, procrastinating by looking at real dogs is a lot better than procrastinating while looking at photos of dogs. Ryder's system is built on the Raspberry Pi camera and a Raspberry Pi, which work together to analyze subjects using a pre-programmed machine learning system that is able to recognize about 80 different objects including people, cars, and dogs as demonstrated below.

Ryder injected a bit of custom code to get the camera operating to his specific desires which you can download here. When it's fully set up and pointed out his front window, Ryder's machine-learning-powered camera can recognize when a dog passes into frame and will alert him via an attached megaphone using an admittedly creepy robotic voice.

"There is a dog outside."

But what if Ryder wasn't home? If they weren't going to be there to appreciate the dogs, they thought that letting dog owners, and therefore the dogs, know that their animal looks nice would be another fun use of his creation.

"We can use the same technology to tell people that have a cool-looking dog even though we can't really tell," Ryder says. "So I turned the megaphone around and opened up the window."

When the Raspberry Pi camera sees a dog, it can yell (in Ryder's voice), "I like your dog!" The results are about as hilarious as you might expect, but a compliment is a compliment, right?

The screenshots above beautifully illustrate how unsettling it is to hear the voice shouting at you, as the person depicted looks around frantically in an attempt to figure out where the loud, disembodied voice is coming from, and why.

"I do feel better, but I'm not sure if it was the dogs or building something that actually worked for once," Ryder concludes.

Whatever the case, what Ryder has built here is just the latest example that shows machine learning algorithms paired with cameras can have both practical uses as well as fun, if not somewhat silly, ones.

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