New Product: Bird Deterrent Accessory

thrilled to replace my DIY version with this!

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I think they have a free download. It’s a PDF.

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They go on easily. It doesn’t seem to make any difference if you install the ring first then the spikes or spikes then ring on the sensor. They also send two extra spikes. :+1:


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Is the ring like a rubber band or a zip tie?

Like a rubber band. It is plenty snug and didn’t want to slide, even on the tapered top of the Tempest. You can see the difference in angle of the spikes between the SKY and Tempest. The edges of the top on the SKY are vertical.

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One more question…Do the spikes arrive with a bend or do you need to bend them?

Here are pictures of an unopened package.

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I received my shipping confirmation. Now I can keep the Mockingbirds away from my Tempests.

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Nice. Thank you for sharing the photos. I like this better than the Ambient Weather Bird Spike - the Tempest spikes looks longer in length.

Geez, I may order a few just to have on hand and test with. It looks good.

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I plan to UNinstall the Ambient spikes and install the Tempest° version when mine arrives.

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Here it is on the Tempest co-located with the CoCoRaHS. The southern most spike is due south so you can see this is taken a little past solar noon. The spikes extend just over 6cm from the top of the band.


The spikes are about 1.9mm (0.076") in diameter.

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Tempest° Bird Deterrent Accessory (and make-shift sundial!)
“The southern most spike is due south so you can see this is taken a little past solar noon.”

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Bird-henge??? :laughing:

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I’m planning to do the same. I placed my order this evening.

If they are shadowing the light sensor…
It appears that it should be possible to turn some spikes outward in the positions where they might cause a shadow on the light sensor.
Or cut or bend them lower.
cheers Ian :slight_smile:

At the moment they aren’t shading the light sensor. It will be interesting to see how far into winter it is before shading begins to occur. I’m most interested in the sensor not being shaded when calibration data is collected.

I did measure the angle between the nearest edge of the sensor diffuser and the tip of a bent in spike. On the SKY it was 56° and on the Tempest it was 44° so it is less likely the Tempest sensor will get shadowed than on the SKY due to the tapered sides of the Tempest.

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perhaps not at noon, but in early mornings and evenings the spikes probably do shade the sensor. If a spike fully crosses the window, you can expect a decrease in intensity of something like 10-15% (I don’t know the exact dimensions of the sensor window). Having said that, with some clever algorithm one could compensate for this, but that isn’t very easy. If there is a cloud blocking the sunlight, the effect of the shadow of the spike is not very big at all.
Personally I think the spikes are to thick. But that of course would depend on the bird size.

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The sensor window is just under 0.8" so probably 20mm. I agree that the spikes are larger than necessary unless cockatoos wouldn’t care about smaller ones. It may be that the rubber like material holds a larger spike better. If that is the case, I would think that a smaller spike with a 2mm base would work but then cost would likely be higher. Another reason they may be as large as they are is to reduce the likelihood of vibrations causing false rain.

ok, given the window’s size, it has an area of 314 mm2. If the spikes, with a width of 1.9 mm, are casting a shadow straight through the center of the window, they would cover an area of almost 1.9*20 = 38 mm2. That is about 12%. My guess would be that the actual influence will be slightly less.
I would have used 0.5 mm springy steel wire, which at most reduces the measurement by 3%.
But kookaburras or cockatoos might be just to big for those thin wires.

Luckily for me, my bird seem to have given up for now on the sky unit.