My parents have an unusual number of bird / squirrel / deer / racoon feeders in their back yard. Like easily over 50 feeders, so what’s one more, right? She likes to sit outside with my nephew with an app that will identify bird chirps, so they are amateur ornithologists. For mothers day, I got my mom a Birdfy Smart Bird Cam from Netvue, that will use A.I. to identify birds that land on the feeder, and send you notifications to your phone with video. I did not particularly like the feeder that you could buy with it, so I opted for the stand-alone cam with solar, and designed and built the bird feeder part myself. Easy-peasy, right? Well, it turned into a project indeed with something that is way more complex than it needs to be. But I could not be happier with the end result!
I used my Glowforge and 3D resin printer in this project. I recently got a Anycubic Photon Max, and to print a custom enclosure for the camera. Designed in Fusion 360, this is the housing that the camera slides into, but keeps the bird seeds off the camera.
I designed the house/seed holder part using Illustrator to be cut with the Glowforge. I used a combination of 1/4" and 1/8" Baltic Birch, 
acrylic and walnut. Lots of engraving to get different faux patterns on the outer faces of the feeder. I was going for the timber frame look and think it turned out great. I finished all exposed pieces with Shellac to protect against the elements.
The free bird seed sign is an homage to Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius.
To get the faux wood texture on the walls, brick for the floor, and tiles for the roof, I purchased seamless patterns off creative market a while back for another bird feeder project.
The roof panels slide off to provide access to add bird feed.
So, does it work?
Within 30 minutes, the is the first bird that landed on the feeder. Although, I think they need to provide a macro lens for this, as the images are a bit soft and blurry, I was giddy when the A.I. actually worked. My beta tester was identified by the app as a either a Rainbow Lorikeet or a Painted Bunting. This is a Painted Bunting, and am happy that he was the first to get a snack.
Here is a Tit Mouse that showed up later, or at least that’s what the apps said. Looks like a blue jay to me.:
I will add the solar panel when I mount this to the final destination as it’s currently in a temporary spot while testing.
