Radio Control Varmint Control

RogerN · 2009-02-15T03:48:16+00:00

Living out of city limits comes with varmints (skunk, raccoon, possum, coyote, etc.). Since I've been into R/C models for many years, I've been thinking about an R/C toy that could be useful for varmint control. The general idea is a model vehicle, tank or 4X4 truck type model, and add some kind of gun (air gun?) that would be as near lethal (to varmints) as legally possible. The gun wouldn't need to be lethal as long as it could deter the varmints return. The gun on the vehicle would be aimed with the aid of a wireless on board camera.Ideas on the vehicle or aiming device are good but I'm especially looking for ideas on the gun (or other method to chase away varmints). I'm figuring on using my 6 channel radio, 1 channel for forward & reverse + speed, a channel for steering, two channels for gun pointing, and 2 channels for firing (safety + trigger). So what about a paintball gun, perhaps with solid plastic balls? Or maybe a CO2 BB pistol? Pepper Spray? Other? (no flame throwers in case I have to send the vehicle under the house after a varmint :-) I shot our pet ducks with an airsoft gun before and it didn't seem to bother them, I don't think they felt it through their feathers, I doubt an airsoft gun would drive a possum away either.RogerN

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RogerN 17 years ago

I have ran across what they call First Person View (FPV) of radio control models. The basic idea is that people operate radio control models using a camera on the model and video goggles. Some use a sensor on the video goggles and servos on the camera, when the operator moves their head, the camera moves. That way you can operate a RC car, boat, submarine, tank, plane, or helicopter and look around by turning and tilting your head.

They also have camera switches that operate from RC that allow you to switch between 2 cameras. In my application, it would be nice to switch between an operator camera and a scope camera. It would also be nice if instead of just moving the camera, I could rig up servos to move a gun turret with view cam and scope cam. This might allow varmint drive by shootings :-)

This place has info and videos.

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Before long I'm hoping to order the camera, transmitter, and receiver. Later on I might get video goggles. On my dual stick transmitters I think I can throttle and steer with one stick and point with the other stick.

I bought a wireless network camera and have spotted 2 skunks stealing cat food with it in 2 days. It seems that every time I try to look at the network camera, it has to be reset. I'm not sure if it's a signal problem or something else. I'll try relocating my repeater and see if that helps.

RogerN

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Ed Huntress 17 years ago

Why don't you rig one of the gophers with the camera, and put a little suicide vest on him? Then you can watch him go down the hole, or to show up for a gopher hoe-down, and blow up a whole pack of the little suckers at once.

If you rig him with a receiver and a speaker, you can even shout "Allah akbar!" just before you push the button.

You could make kits for the things and sell them through ebay. These should sell big in flyover country.

-- Ed Huntress

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