Vending Machine for Birds

After running the vending machine unattended for almost a month, it has proven to be pretty reliable but still has some failure modes that are not completely solved.

Funnel Jam - solution in testing

The worst one is when the funnel beneath the dispenser gets jammed. There is no way to fix this remotely, so it needs to be avoided. After 100+ dispenses it jammed yesterday afternoon, leaving the jackdaws a little confused.

I had been thinking of completely redesigning this to not use a funnel, just drop the peanut onto an angled platform to dispense. This would add some complexity and build difficulty, so yesterday I took a shot at improving the funnel design first. The path is smoother now and I think jams will be even less likely to happen. I built a new funnel assembly last night and swapped out the old one today. Hopefully no more funnel jams.

Missed Deposit - solution known, to do

This is the second worst, and should be pretty easy to fix. I need a better way to mount the deposit sensor (using tape and velcro now) to give it a better view of the deposit chute. Right now it appears to miss about 3% of deposits and I think this is the cause. I will have a look this weekend.

This is not a persistent failure mode, and it happens rarely. I do think it can be easily fixed though.

Ghost Dispense - solution ideas, need to refine and test

Occasionally (about 2% of the time in the last month) a piece of shell or debris from the peanut hopper will register as a dispensed peanut. The best way to avoid this is to remove debris from the peanuts before loading the hopper and cleaning it a bit when refilling. I do have an idea to leave one or two small openings away from the sensors and modify the vibrating platform a bit so debris is dispensed but not seen by the dispense sensor. 

This happens rarely, but with other rewards like dog food pellets it would be a worse problem as the vibrations could shake off crumbs and small pieces easier.

Hopefully before the end of the year I will have eliminated or reduced the frequency of these failure modes.

I've been uploading deposit videos to YouTube since 16-OCT.  23 days running so far. I'm rarely at home and it's been unattended during that time except for a peanut top-up and providing some caps and butts on 27-OCT, and providing more caps and butts on 07-NOV.

I'm still on Stage 4 - providing deposit material near the vending machine. Stage 5 is the goal - where a bird brings something I didn't provide.

In the last 23 days I've had 104 deposits from birds.

• only jackdaws making deposits so far
• between 4-5 deposits per day
• no jams or dispense timeouts so far
• 4 deposits were not registered by the deposit sensor - a failure rate of about 4% which I plan to address

To make the channel easier to deal with I think I will start concatenating deposit videos into daily videos or maybe weekly.

The birds set a new record today, at least since 16-OCT - 11 deposits in one day: 

Sometimes the machine has a lot of lurkers waiting for a smarter bitd to make a peanut come out. Here's a jackdaw that had a plan for that.

I left on holiday and was not at my place for 10 days. The VMFB worked fine while I was gone - no jams or technical issues. I occasionally monitored it via the motioneye web interface. Between 1 and 6 deposits daily from the local jackdaws.

I finally added a YouTube channel and will be adding code to automatically upload videos that contain a deposit event.

For now I'm doing it manually - only 10 videos uploaded so far starting from 16-SEP. Will add more once my upload restriction is lifted.

https://www.youtube.com/@VendingMachineForBirds

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UPDATE - I'm now uploading videos daily-ish. 75 videos so far. Not sure if this is useful for others but it's nice to have all the deposit videos in one accessible place for me :)

I've been wanting to make use of the ESP32 in this project. Low power consumption, sleep mode, wireless comms, 2 DAC outputs, I2C, RTC, SD-card module and plenty of GPIO. Rather than have an ESP32 CAM module run the show, talking to a PIC that manages the events, I will just use a standard ESP32 dev board and allow adding a controlled camera module via I2C/S{I/UART. This will keep base costs and power consumption down, and still be suitable for those who don't want or already have a camera for this.

So new PCB and software, optional I2C/UART/SPI-controlled camera - everything else will stay the same.

The 2 DAC outputs will enable remote sensor adjustment - I can replace the pots with the DAC outputs.

Solar power becomes more practical since power consumption will be lower (~150 when transmitting using wireless comms, ~80 when just listening, ~20 mA with wireless disabled, <1 mA sleeping).

I can still enable remote monitoring and control, and make a more informative dashboard. Sending data and maybe files to a service to process/store would be even better and more power-efficient,

Wifi and Bluetooth might also be options for camera control.

LoRa or cellular might be worth considering since I'd like to deploy one of these in a park someday.

Just putting this here so I don;t forget. I won't be able to start on this for a few weeks.

The Jackdaws are stil hacking away at stage 4 (deposit items left near the vending machine). Increased neighbor-cat traffic has led to fewer bird visits, but they still show up to deposit something 5-10 times a day. I don't want to keep the cats out - I like them too - but I do think I woud get more activity without them.

One thing that has become apparent is that the further above the ground that you mount the machine, the less likely the birds are to gather things from the ground to deposit. My platform is less than a meter above the balcony floor, but on the first floor (second floor in the US). Birds will take things from around the balcony to deposit, but have not brought in any of the marked bottlecaps I left in the garden below. I think that putting it at ground level in the open would facilitate making it to stage 5, but I don't have a place to do this yet.

If I moved to a place with a ground floor garden that would be ideal.

I improved the deposit sensor placement a few days ago and so far no missed deposits. 

The jackdaws have gottten pretty used to having to look for bottlecaps around the balcony, I took the arm off the machine and just put a few behind the machine, on the floor and in planters on the railing.

I'll be taking a holiday soon and won't be around to provide caps and butts, so it will be a real test for them. 

Some stuff I've noticed over the last couple of weeks.

• Most deposit activity is in the morning between 07:00 and 11:00 - average of about 15 deposits per day.
• Using unshelled peanuts is a good way to attract corvids without attracting pigeons.
• This will work best in an urban environment or near a public space like a park, square or stadium where cigarette butts, bottle caps and similar litter is easy to find.
• Birds may get territorial about the vending machine. I used to get a couple magpies and the occasional crow. Now it's all jackdaws.

Now the jackdaws are pros at depositing stuff I leave around the feeder.

https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1847547904515136/VMFB-MC_09-24-52.mp4

I might try putting a few marked bottlecaps in the complex garden to see if they end up in the vending machine.

Today I saw a few instances on jackdaws landing with a bottlecap already in their mouth. They were Westmalle and Leffe caps, so I think they are likely mine and this one is wet and may have come from the planters on the balcony railing. The birds have occasionally taken caps from the platform and dropped them there. 

The interesting bit is that they appear to be arriving with caps instead of landing empty-beaked and then looking for caps or butts to use.

https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1847547904515136/VMFB-MC_13-23-17.mp4

I've also noticed that occasionally the deposit sensor misses a deposit. I think I need to adjust the placement a bit to make sure it sees everything that comes though. Things bounce around in the deposit tube on the way down and I think they sometimes bounce over the sensor's line of sight. I'll try to fix this in the next few days. 

Here's a persistent jackdaw sinking 3 caps before getting a peanut. I need to fix this.

https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1847547904515136/VMFB-MC_11-49-08.mp4

And another bringing two bottlecaps, maybe just in case.

https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1847547904515136/VMFB-MC_09-28-52.mp4

I added a conditioning stage because the gap between depositing stuff left on the platform and foraging for items seems too large without an intermediate step. Now I put a few things on the platform and the rest on the mounting stand and in a cup mounted a few centimeters from the platform. I think this will require a gradually moving them farther away from the vending machine until they will pick them up from the floor of the balcony.

They are now pretty good at depositing caps and butts left for them to use.

https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1847547904515136/VMFB-MC_15-38-18.mp4

And have started to understand that they can bring things that are not on the platform.

Jackdaw sinking a cap taken from the cup near the platform and getting robbed by his friend.

https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1847547904515136/VMFB-MC_08-27-44.mp4

Jackdaw taking a bottlecap from the stand behind the vending machine and sinking it.

https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1847547904515136/VMFB-MC_09-18-18.mp4

Jackdaw taking a cigarette butt from the cup near the platform and sinking it.

https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1847547904515136/VMFB-MC_17-03-10.mp4

This seems like good progress for one week. As soon as they get good at it, I'll move it farther away. I can swivel the bowl arm to make the bowl about half a meter away from the platform. I also need to start lowering it closer to the ground.

I've gotten pretty far with the local jackdaws. Depositing items I leave on the platform is no longer a challenge for them, but they still haven't figured out that they can bring stuff to deposit on their own.

To try and bridge this gap I added a conditioning stage between 3 (deposit provided on platform) and 4 (no deposit provided), so there are now 6 stages.

The new stage calls for placing items for deposit near the platform to get the birds used to the idea that they can bring stuff to the platform. I've added a wooden arm to the stand  to hold a PVC cap with some bottlecaps and a few butts in it. It appears to be working - I've seen them bring these to the platform and deposit them a few times already.

After a week or so I will put another end cap with bottlecaps and butts on the ground near the vending machine. Hopefuly this will lead to some progress.

New list of stages is below.

Conditioning Stages
0 - Small amount of food in the area you will mount the vending machine to attract birds (~1 week)
1 - Food Provided, Timed Dispense, Deposit Provided (1-2 weeks)
2 - No Food Provided, Timed Dispense, Deposit Provided (2-3 weeks)
3 - No Food Provided, No Timed Dispense, Deposit Provided on the Platform (3-4 weeks)
4 - No Food Provided, No Timed Dispense, Deposit Provided Near The Platform (TBD)
5 - No Food Provided, No Timed Dispense, No Deposit Provided (GOAL!)