Sampson Goes High-Tech
At 7:18 AM the sun has already come up for the day. Sampson is awake and walks over and presses a button to turn on a florescent light to start his day. He begins to eat and has a little bit to drink. Five minutes later he presses another button and turns on the radio. He sits back and plays for a little while until David comes downstairs to greet him.
The previous description might sound the average persons routine, but in reality it is what my sulphur crested 
too Sampson does in the morning. It is he who turns on the light and the radio through small switches located in his cage.
I always wonder what makes my bird happy. Would he like the light turned on? Would he like some music? Would he prefer less light and silence? I am only looking out for him and trying my best to please him. That’s how I came up with this system. I asked myself “If the bird had the choice, what would he do?”
“I’m buying a computer for the bird”
You should have seen the look on my wife’s face when I said that sentence. “Even I don’t have a computer to use” she replied.
“You will get the next one. I promise.” I said. Her eyebrow raised suspiciously as she left the room.
I went down to the local surplus electronics store. I found an old (very old) computer. An IBM XT. 640K of memory. 20 Megabyte hard drive. Black and white monitor. Asking price $60. I managed to talk the guy down to $40. When I left the store the salesman and I were both smiling as if we both had just ripped off someone who didn’t know any better. I was glad to have it. He was glad to see it go. I also bought a few switches. Sliding switches, light switches, button switches. I just grabbed an assortment hoping the bird would be able to operate one of them.
“What did I get myself into?”
When I got the assortment home I knew this was not going to be easy. I had never done anything like this before. I didn’t know much about electronics. I would have to write a computer program, something I really hadn’t done since high school computer class.
I mounted all the switches on a piece of plexiglass and let Sampson play with them for a while.
My next move was to get some answers. I turned on MY computer and connected to the Internet. I searched all over for information about how to program your computer to turn on a light. I didn’t find anything specific on how to do it, but plenty of places were selling products to control lights in your home for hundreds of dollars. I thought I had already put out my $40 and hoped to keep this experiment cheap. Fortunately I found some articles that lead me on the right path.
Not knowing much on programming, I decided to stick with BASIC. Within a few hours I was able to send a message to turn on a light! Wow, was I excited. I was on the right track.
Back in the cage Sampson had destroyed every switch except one. This was a little switch called a microswitch.
I held the switch up to Sampson. He held the end in his beak and clicked the switch up and down. We had our winner! However, as any cockatoo owner knows, nothing is indestructible to a busy beak. I grabbed some old particle board and sealed up everything around the switch so that only a little lever sticks out of a big block of wood. Wires that came off the switch were placed in plexiglass tubing that ran down the side of the cage. I did the same with the second switch.
“Safety first”
Having Sampson control 120 Volt appliances was a scary thought. With the computer controlling the system, I had nothing to worry about. The 120 Volt wires stay well out of the birds reach and are not even near the cage. There are only three wires in the bird cage sealed in a heavy plexiglass tube. If the bird was able to bite through he would find that two wires have no current in them. The third wire has 4 volts DC. That is about the same as the two small batteries that are in your TV remote control.
“The big programming job”
If the computer understood English, I wanted to say to it “When Sampson pushes the top switch, turn the light off or on. When Sampson presses the bottom switch, turn the radio off or on. And keep a log of everything he does.” Unfortunately the computer isn’t as easy to speak to. However, I did remember a few things from high school. I also typed in the help command every few minutes. Before I knew it, I could press either switch in Sampson’s cage and the light and radio would turn off and on.
“Sampson sees the switches in his cage… A new toy to destroy?”
When I had everything connected up to his cage Sampson, with his infinite curiosity ,walked up to the switch. As he hit the top switch he jumped back and hissed as a light near the cage went on. He hit the switch again and the light went out. Another hiss at the light. He presses the switch a number of times and light flashes off and on. Then Sampson gets this look – he stares at the switch – cocks his head towards the light – and then back to the switch. A moment of insight? It was at that point I could have sworn Sampson was saying to himself “Aaah… I see how that works.”
“Living with the appliances”
The bird is no longer surprised when the light or radio comes on. In fact he is surprised if it doesn’t. I was hoping a predictable pattern would emerge. But nothing yet. The logs show he uses the switches at 10AM, 4PM, and 9PM most. Sometimes he only turns the radio or light on once and leaves it on for the full day. Sometimes he turns them off and on for minutes or hours at a time. One day he pressed the switches 1200 times. But normally he turns the light on and off twice a day. The same applies to the radio. It is very interesting to see Sampson’s behavior. The computer logs the date and time of each press of the switch, and also tells me if he turned the radio or light off or on. I can then take that data and move it to a spreadsheet and see the trends in his behavior.
“The future”
I keep asking myself “What would the bird like to control?” In the upcoming months the bird will have an electronic dispenser for his food and water. In addition my last trip to the produce section at the grocery store inspired me to add a switch that will allow the bird to give himself a “shower.” I don’t exactly know how to set this up, but I will work on it.
“The bottom line”
All in all, I spent $40 on the computer, $3 on switches, $15 on two relays, and used about 50¢ worth of wire. Even though I had never done anything like this before, I was shocked at how easy it was. But most importantly I had given Sampson more choices, more control over his environment. And in the process I hope I have made him a happier bird.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2011 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.