Since becoming a homeowner again last November I’ve been amazed by not only how far technology has come but also how just many different products it’s crept into.
I’ve been searching for a smart doorbell to monitor our front door and as a deterrent to porch-pirates who make their living pilfering Amazon packages. I’d narrowed the list down to a few—the EcoBee and the Eufy. Each brand has their pros and cons but they have one thing in common, they’re damned expensive and can require subscriptions which will siphon off your cash for the lifetime of the product.
Enter the humble Birdsnap smart bird feeder. My wife ordered this from Amazon and I installed it in a tree in our front yard a few days ago.
I have one word for this thing–impressive. This bird feeder has nearly every function a smart doorbell would with the added bonus of being able to watch and learn about the abundant wildlife out here on the edge of city.
Not only does this smart-bird feeder allow you to watch the birds from your phone anywhere in the world but it also identifies which kind of birds are feeding.
Birdsnap monitors the front door as well. It has AI built-in and will send you a notification when someone is leaving a package, pulling into your driveway, or arriving at your front door. The best part about it is it comes with a solar panel to keep the camera’s battery charged by the sun.
The birdfeeder has night vision, an alarm, a microphone, and a speaker as well. You can speak through the app or trigger the alarm to scare off the occasional raccoon or deer that might try to knock the feeder out of the tree. And, yes, the perpetual immaturity in me is itching to use the microphone/alarm to scare the crap out of unsuspecting visitors walking up to our front door.
If you’re snowbirds like us, this comes in very handy. It’s crazy, and a bit scary, how much tech is now baked into everyday products.
Poems from the Edge of the Apocalypse Update
I'm thrilled to report that the most time-consuming part of the book creation process is done! Over the past couple of days I’ve extracted about a hundred poems I've written since 2021 from my Hive blog and compiled into book form (thank you Hive). This phase of the book production has taken a total of about eight hours of reformatting and doing minor edits along the way.
Lubosh, my talented book-designer, was able to enhance the resolution of my childhood picture so it pairs with the Grok-created image a little better.
As soon as I finish the cover text and front/back matter the manuscript will be ready to hand off to the book designer. Cover design will be finalized at this point. After that last design-phase is complete I'll need to double-down on the marketing strategy. Poetry collections aren't exactly flying off bookstore shelves but I'm hoping to make at least enough off this next book to cover production costs. Marketing is always the most challenging part of launching a self-published book.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, blogging on Hive makes it very easy to write a book. All you have to do is write and publish your serialized subject matter in your Hive blog then extract it into book form and self-publish. I'd love to see more authors utilize their Hive blogs for book creation. This is a huge value-add for authors by adding additional review streams and it's being very under-utilized.
Poems from the Edge of the Apocalypse may be published sooner than expected. More news to come!
Be well, make the most of this day. Thank you for reading!
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What an awesome bird feeder/ doorbell/surveillance cam!
I'm sure you must be loving the growing bird species you're seeing. It's such a pleasure watching them.
We had quite a number of birds before Poe came along, had to stop feeding them😒
With crime so rife here courier companies have to personally hand the parcel to us, some even sms a pincode that has to be given to the person delivering before they'll hand the parcel over.
I hope it deters the parcel thieves!
I'm so keen to use some of my Hive content and put it in book form. Perhaps when I fully retire!
It is pretty awesome. A squirrel has claimed the bird feeder as his own these past few days and chatters at any birds who try to land. That's too bad about the crime there. I've seen quite a bit in the news recently about how bad the cities have become in South Africa. It was horrible in our old neighborhood. We'd see discarded delivery boxes everywhere where porch-pirates would take the contents and throw the boxes out of the car. Luckily, we're far safer out here where we are now. The biggest danger is the occasional rogue deer or coyote. : ) You should publish Lizelle! If you ever decide to do that and have questions let me know. A cook book would pair very well with your Airbnb business.
When I was followed you on Hive blockchain I have seen you have published such a talented and creative poems and I could fortunate to read some of them. Yjay's why I always appreciate your talented skills beacuse guy I know about your talent amd ability.
Thank you, I appreciate it!
I have had a lot of fun with this bird feeder because I had never seen it here.
However, I want to congratulate you on the book.
I have written two books and I have not had the chance to publish them because it is very complicated here.
But, I know how much effort and sacrifice it takes.
Happy Saturday my dear @ericvancewalton. Cheers and greetings
Thank you very much! Self-publishing definitely isn't easy. When I first began, in the days before online publishing, I would have the books printed myself at local printers and would bind them with plastic spiral-binding. Surprisingly some of those books made more profit than one's I've published on Amazon. Cheers my friend!
Hahaha. I imagine it must be fun to see how many birds come to your house. What makes me think:How many people will be watching us without us realizing it?Great that the book is almost done, friend, and that you solved the photo problem. I'm already curious to see it. Have a nice Thursday and hugs!
We're getting a steady stream of "customers" now at the feeder. : ) Thank you. I'm so glad I decided to move forward with the book. I almost forgot how much fun the process was. It's hard to believe it's already been four years since I published Ephemera. I hope this one sells better than that one did. The results of that particular book launch was the one that made me decide to stop publishing. Enjoy your weekend my friend! It was 76 yesterday and we have snow in the forecast for the next 24hrs.
That bird feeder is awesome, my sister has the ring doorbell, she like it.
Those are nice! I think we'll still end up getting a smart doorbell eventually.
That's awesome news about your book. I really need to go through and self-publish some of my haiku from Hive. Of course I can't imagine many people will buy it, but just having a book for the resume can't be a bad thing.
I've seen several people now using one of those bird-feeder cameras. Kind of neat!
Thank you! I encourage you to publish. You might be surprised by how many people would be interesting in it. And, you're right, published books carry a certain cachet. They can lead to much more opportunities down the road.
Yeah, we're really enjoying the feeder!
That's pretty cool about the bird feeder. That's also nice looking cardinal you have coming around. I went with a Ring device for our front yard. It doesn't get our door, but it gets pretty much everything else. I had some misgivings about Ring with their data breaches and subscriptions, but there is also something to be said for a device that is pretty much the industry standard. They definitely aren't cheap!
I didn't have a clue these things existed. We have so much more wildlife out here than we did in the city. I think we see bald eagles just about every day now. Ring is a good option. We were considering EcoBee only because it more seamlessly integrates with the EcoBee thermostat we have.
I have a friend that has one of the bird feeder cameras. She seems to really love it. I didn't realize they serve a dual purpose, and that is honestly kind of cool.
Wow! Interesting, I bet you will have sweety records, also you can use them in your Youtube channel :)
There are lots of bird feeder channels on YouTube. Some are making some serious ad revenue too.
The bird feeder is the ultimate multitasker, watching birds and guarding the house at the same time. What I would do is l would probably use the speaker to troll my friends with random bird calls haha
The temptation to use that speaker for nefarious things is strong. We live in a neighborhood of seniors though and I wouldn't want to be causing any medical emergencies. : )
oh yes, I didn't consider that... You're right, for their sake it shouldn't be done but if I get my hands on it, I personally don't live in that kind of neighborhood so it's game on 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Don't get yourself into trouble now. : )
hahaha I'll make sure not too 🤣🤣
Interesting article. Good afternoon and best wishes to all of us.
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