Barcelona native Jorge Rancรฉ and his friend Christina encountered a small bird with a broken leg and took it to the vet to get a cast. After the cast was removed, Pato (as they named it) needed a little bit more time to heal at Jorge’s home. Unfortunately, since he’s not home often, Jorge needed a way to keep an eye on the bird.
“I had a Raspberry Pi lying at home,” he said. “And since I work as a System Engineer for Linux and Unix systems, I thought it wouldnโt be so difficult to set-up a system using a Raspberry Pi to monitor Pato via the Internet.”
To monitor Pato remotely, Jorge hooked up a webcam, temperature sensor, and water level sensor to the Raspberry Pi. He used TwitPic‘s email gateway to post photos of Pato and to alert Jorge if the temperature is too high or the water level is low.
Jorge equipped the Pi with a USB Wifi dongle and enclosed the project in a used cardboard box. After setting it near Pato’s cage and putting the scripts into action, he was the proud owner and maker of what he calls PATOSS, The Pato Surveillance System.
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