I was tasked with building a device that emits bird noises at specific times of the day, with the intent of attracting real birds of that species to nests that had been built for them.
The problem was that these nests are in the middle of nowhere, so no power or internet – hence the solar bit.
There are commercially available devices to achieve this, but for some reason they are like 10 times as expensive as doing it yourself. I’m sure an electronics person could have done it cheaper still, but I’m a software person, so I spent just north of 100 bucks on:
- Raspberry Pi Zero (with Raspbian)
- Waveshare WM8960 Hi-Fi Sound Card & Speakers
(official driver did not work, seeed-voicecard did) - Waveshare Solar Power Manager with a built-in LiPo Battery (10000mAh)
- Polysilicon Solar Panel (18V 10W)
