 |
|
| Although we love to keep up with new media like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter, we didn't really feel like maintaining a Twitter account ourselves. Instead we thought of tweets generated by real birds. By hooking up a birdfeeder to a computer connected to the internet to a Twitter account, birds can initiate real Twitter messages. This site will be used to keep you updated on the project. |
 |
|
|
| The actual messages: | |
| The first tweet caught on camera: Tweet! 19:38 |
|
 |
|
| If you turn up your volume you can hear a birdsound at 0:08. It's the sound my laptop makes when it receives a tweet from the feeder. |
 |
||
| The first actionshots: | ||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
||
|
|||||
| Making the first model: | |||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| The weight of a small sparrow. |
Using an old keyboard and a mouse. | The switches for T, W, E and the lmb. | Cables run from the feeder to the pc. | The first tweeterfeeder. | |
Making the second model: |
|||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| When looking for parts, I discovered these plastic frogs with a motion detector. Dissecting several frogs was necessary. | This is the detector. I first tried to directly connect it to a key on the keyboard, which didn't work.Then I replaced the speaker by a key, hoping it would receive a signal and work as a switch. | Normally the frog makes a krkr, krkr, krkrkr
sound when the detector spots something.
The result of hooking it up to the keyboard
was "ww..ww..www" Interesting but not very useful. |
After the frog experience I decided to
just buy some switches. I used 3 swiches in a row and make a lever press on all 3 of them. |
This model generates a tweet each time a bird visits the feeder. The message it will send is "tweet!". | |
| Making the third model: | |||||
 |
 |
 |
|||
The basic idea for the third model came from the restriction of Twitter not allowing the same message twice. The solution was found in software that can produce macro coding to generate certain actions by pressing a single button. |
So all i needed for this model is just one micro switch connected to a keyboard. Because I now have 2 working feeders and the software to fiddle around, one feeder will generate a "tweet" , and the other a "chirp", both followed by the actual time. |
The third model. I've built the switch into an existing birdfeeder, so its a little less hideous than number 1 & 2. |
|||
|
|
