AI to the rescue!
Literally.
Last night I was outside with the dogs doing what they do. I was doing the standard scrolling on the phone waiting for my little Lio to wrap it up, and I got this notification on my phone:
For frame of reference…on the left is me in my robe (complete with towel on my head), my big dog is directly behind me, little dog on the left a few steps away. And on the right is the bear just as he set off the camera.
Let me back up. We live in a fairly rural area and have several cameras outside. Dave says they’re for security, I say they are for wildlife. We’ve captured video of a million and one deer (and loads of babies), almost as many foxes, loads of racoons, skunks, squirrels, some bobcats, wild turkeys, hawks, owls, and yes, many bears (even a mama and her cubs, and a pair of bears making more bears).
We have a few different types of cameras. A Ring doorbell and secondary Ring camera at the back door; a ton of Blink cameras and a few Reolink cameras. Why so many? Well because we’re nerds who love home automation and because we can. These Reolink cameras are more receptive to the nerdy stuff. They also have a cool solar panel, so we don’t have to worry about batteries.
Dave built out some fun AI for us for the Reolink cameras.
- Gemini-2.0-flash for the AI
- Prompt is something like…you’re looking out the window at the driveway, tell me what you see
- A screen image and text description are captured
- Google Home Assistant API gets the message with the description
- Home assistant posts a message to a private Telegram channel
- Telegram sends me a notification with the info
Back to the bear.
I'm outside with the pups. Dave's gone, so I'm the only grown-up human here. I look at my phone and get the notification from the camera telling me there's a bear heading my way RIGHT NOW. I picked up my little Lio mid-poop and told Xena to go back to the house (you can hear me at the end of the first video). They never knew anything was happening. Phew.
Generally speaking, our bears will avoid confrontation. I’m glad I didn’t have to test that theory.
The bear was not interested in me or my dogs. It wanted the trashcan full of yummy scraps and leftover homemade goulash. It took a full five minutes trying to open it. And failed. Woohoo for bear-proof trashcans. It’s the second time a bear has tried and failed to get in. We didn’t catch the actual footage of the bear trying to get in, but we got the before and after.
The AI is great, but still imperfect. A few days ago, it told me a squirrel was a badger.