Inspiration
Every year, millions of vehicles collide with wildlife, costing billions of dollars and thousands of lives. Farmers also lose up to 20% of their crops annually to animals and pests. Current deterrents (fences, chemicals, propane cannons, etc.) are expensive, harmful, or ineffective. We were inspired to ask: what if sound itself could be turned into a protective shield?
What We Built
We created Aura, a programmable acoustic deterrent device. It emits adaptive ultrasonic and audible signals to deter animals from vital areas and uses real time location tracking for both driving safety and farming protection. The device connects to a companion app and dashboard for control, scheduling, and analytics. Multiple Auras can form a lightweight network, creating scalable protection zones.
How We Built It
Hardware: Speaker module with microcontroller control, configurable frequency sweeps, and status indicators.
Software: Python backend, mobile/web dashboard for profile control and analytics, and live spectrogram visualization.
Integration: Geolocation tracking for different contexts (deer, rodents, birds, etc.), adaptive dashboard analytics, and network integration.
Challenges
- Using real location data for frequency selection
- Using a distributed protocol without ESP32 hardware
- Creating a working hardware prototype in under 24 hours
What We Learned
- Hardware/software co-design matters: even a simple speaker becomes powerful when paired with the right software
- Constraints drive creativity: lack of access to materials forced us to be creative
- Delegation: dividing the work improved efficiency and collaboration
What’s Next
- Field trials with cars and tractors to measure real deterrence effectiveness
- Building more modules to form a real network
- Partnering with fleets and farms to validate ROI and safety improvements
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