The other problem is allocating peanuts to other birds (chickadees, nuthatches, cardinals, etc) while not giving too many to the blue jays. However, there's a project I ran across from CalTech that can determine the type of bird in front of a camera via computer vision[1][2][3]. Not sure why the creator of the squirrel project used a camera though when a cheaper, more robust sensor would work unless he was eventually thinking of extending its usage for more than simple motion detection.
[1] http://vision.caltech.edu/visipedia/20q.html
[1] http://blog.ulfster.com/post/114942851719/squirrel-feeder-v2...
If anyone else has used motion on a Raspberry Pi, have you have any issues staying connected to wi-fi? I was running motion on my Raspberry Pi, trying to do something similar, and found that within 24 hours the wifi module would disconnect and stay down. I would have to reboot.
Without having motion running, I can stay connected to wifi for weeks at a time with the same pi/router/network. I haven't found a solution for this yet.
#put this in cron daily? #2:10 am sound okay? #10 2 * * *
A better solution might be to check the wifi status periodically and take some action based on the status.
Even better, find out why it is happening and fix that.
Even better-er, add some sort of anti-squirrel weapon.
I will have to try again to figure out why this is happening, there must be an explanation.
I wonder how hard it'd be to do 'squirrel recognition' with the camera