Jan 13th-17th
- Started Deer Dissuader research
Thoughts on beginning deer dissuader project and project sketch:
The week of the 19th was not incredibly productive, I got the lowdown on the bird deterrent box and how the inside works. Lots of things need some reworking but I need to focus on getting a program to recognize a deer. I have limited knowledge of training an AI model but got helpful suggestions about OpenCV and yolov11. Found some tutorials and documentation, will start to implement these tools.
Some important tasks I need to do this week:
- Buy camera
- OpenCV and yolov11 documentation
- Break open the raspberry pi and look at existing code
Week 4 (1/26/25 – 2/1/25)
!! Solar Power due
| 1/26/25 | 1/27/25 | 1/28/25 | 1/29/25 | 1/30/25 | 1/31/25 | 2/1/25 | |
| To-do | – OpenCV & yolov11 research | – Expand dataset – Order camera? | – Expand dataset – Get solder and 3D printer certified 🤠 | – Order camera rain-check | – Open pi | – Expand dataset | – Work on exterior camouflage |
| Completed | – Opened roboflow workspace – uploaded photos to train yolov11 model | – Ordered camera, cable, ssd, and ssd adapter/enclosure | – Opened pi, spent 3 hours waiting for opencv to download (it didn’t work) |
Week 5 (2/2/25 – 2/8/25)
!! Exterior camouflage due
| 2/2/25 | 2/3/25 | 2/4/25 | 2/5/25 | 2/6/25 | 2/7/25 | 2/8/25 | |
| To-do | – Need to flash pi | – yolov5 and dependencies | – Set up camera and storage – Camouflage if no delivery | – Go over code | – Go over code | – Deploy? | |
| Completed | – Flashed pi and downloaded OpenCV!!! | – Downloading rest of software |
Week 4 had some bumps at the end. When I finally had time to look into the raspberry pi, I had trouble getting anything downloading with the desktop GUI being active. I believe it was taking up a lot of ram and made downloading very slow. What’s even worse is I think it was a 32 bit OS because certain dependencies were not downloading. Because of these hiccups, they will have to wait until this week, week 5. Additionally, working on camouflage will have to wait for this week too. I hope to get it done Tuesday or Wednesday before winter carnival.
I don’t have too many concerns for next week as long as I can get the model deployed this week. I am currently in the midst of re-flashing the pi and downloading the software we need. If all goes well we are back in business. If not, rip CDR.
Week 6 (2/9/25 – 2/15/25)
| 2/9/25 | 2/10/25 | 2/11/25 | 2/12/25 | 2/13/25 | 2/14/25 | 2/15/25 | |
| To-do | – Deploy if not done yet | – Test with images | – CDR!! | ||||
| Completed | – Obtained roboflow data – Found out roboflow costs to train model | – Research | – Set up data for yolov8 model | – Trained model 🙂 – CDR!! |
Hurdles were jumped in week 6, roboflow was a pain as we found out you have to pay to deploy or export a model they trained. However, you can take datasets from the website and the team already decided on deervision as it was high accuracy, plenty of data, and free to export. 🙂 I was able to use chatGPT and a bunch of guides to figure out how to get a python virtual environment to run yolov8. I have been going back and forth on yolo versions but 8 is the most recent stable version for the pi. I was very proud to get python to work and get the model trained. The next step to tackle is the camera driver issues. 🙁
Week 7 (2/16/25 – 2/22/25)
| 2/16/25 | 2/17/25 | 2/18/25 | 2/19/25 | 2/20/25 | 2/21/25 | 2/22/25 | |
| To-do | – First weekly meeting (5pm) | – Research camera issues and tinker | – Research camera issues and tinker | – Hopefully fix camera and move model to pi | – Organize pi | Spring Break | |
| Completed |