Possumpi

My partner wanted to assist with additional space for possums to live in as trees are being lost in the neighbourhood causing possums to move into unwanted areas. She asked me if there was any way to see if the possums were using the box we set up for them. When I said yes she was ecstatic as possums are cute and fascinating!

I chose to use a Pi as it's easy to use and easily customisable for unique use cases. In the future this won't just be a monitor but may do things like receive commands from the cloud, streaming to Youtube or Twitter etc. Also, the night vision camera is cool and cost effective.

What you need

1. Night Vision Camera for Raspberry Pi
2. Raspberry Pi with WiFi (I used Pi 3 model A+)
3. Raspberry Pi Power Supply
4. Micro SD card (recommend at least 32GB)
5. Sealing plastic container - I used one like this (time will tell if it stands up to weather) (Woolworths)
6. Possum house - This is the one we bought (eBay)
7. I’m using motioneye os for Raspberry Pi to handle the image and video capture - I followed the instructions on Raspberry Valley
8. Some tools to put it together - A drill and drill bits, a tube of silicone sealant and a method to apply it.

Putting it together

I drilled holes in the bottom of the container so the camera and light sensors fit through. I also drilled a hole in the bottom for the power cable for the pi.

Then I cut a hole in the roof of the possum house just large enough for the camera and sensors but smaller than the base of the plastic container (the idea is to minimise exposure of electronics and possums to the weather!). Then I used weatherproof silicone to seal the base of the container to the roof of the possum house.

The power cable runs into the possum house through an existing hole in the side (had to drill this slightly larger to fit the cable in).

I then simply looped an extension cord around the possum house and tied a simple knot at the bottom, directly under the house, ensuring the power supply for the pi sits under the house and hopefully out of the rain.

 I placed the Pi and the camera inside of the container and threaded the power cord up through the house and plugged it all in. Booted it up and now we could keep an eye on Peppermint; she's the most frequent possum, loves apples but hates bananas, oranges and tomatoes.

Here's approximately what I drilled out, also make room for the micro-USB to poke through the bottom.

The Final Product

Check out some footage from the PossumPi:

If you want to build your PossumPi with some additions, I would recommend checking out these ideas:

• Add a PIR to detect when something enters the Possum house (Hopefully it's a possum!)
• Adding a power system such as the PiJuice so you could pop one in a remote area, and stream the video back to you using an LTE HAT
• Sending a message with a photo attached to your phone when a possum enters
• Streaming the video to another platform or your own website