Having a very specific problem with brown hares and white-tailed deers eating various stuff in the garden. Need ideas for creating a scarer.
They typically scare strong smells, motion and sounds. Strong smells are problematic because you need to apply smelling stuff daily and they might get used to different smells. So, motion and sounds are probably the way to go.
Outdoor motion sensor, speaker and flashing lights might do the trick. The problem is using same sound and light effect may work a few times but they may also get used to that. So, the system should change sounds and light effects to be effective. I don’t mind if this works on other animals too (such as very curious crows).
Ultimate solution would probably be automation system with AI camera that identifies an animal and takes appropriate action (and changes action if previous action didn’t have effect).
Any suggestions how to create such system / automation?
I provide a simple method for your reference:
Just use the custom ringtone feature and the animal detection feature to compose a automation. Here are two examples: playing different carnivorous animal roars at different times in a week to avoid these herbivores forming negative conditioned reflexes and no longer being afraid. You can even increase the number of cameras, distributed in different positions, integrating carnivorous animal roars of different tones for each camera, and setting different time periods for cameras in different positions to detect animals and emit roars, making it difficult for herbivores to find patterns. I think it may be effective, but of course, this may be a relatively complex task (I am using the G5 Pro camera here, and I believe its speaker sound is loud enough, as it can also work outdoors)
@HomeAutomationWizard It sounds like you’re tackling a tricky garden pest issue—brown hares and deer can be persistent! Let’s break down how to start building your scarer system using Aqara’s automation tools.
First, setting up basic motion-triggered actions is straightforward. In the Aqara Home app, go to “Automation” on the homepage, click the “+” in the upper right corner, then add your outdoor motion sensor as the trigger in the “IF” section (e.g., “motion detected”). In the “THEN” section, link it to devices like a speaker (to play sounds) or smart lights (to flash) . This covers the core motion-sound/light setup.
However, the reference information doesn’t include details on automating changing sound or light effects. For that, you might try creating multiple automations with different sound/light profiles and scheduling them to rotate, or using third-party tools if supported. The AI camera integration you mentioned is also beyond the current info, but it’s an interesting idea—maybe the community has workarounds to share!
Feel free to update us on your progress, and others might chime in with their own setups. Happy gardening (and scarer-building)!
