ASPECTEK - Yard Sentinel Ultrasonic Animal Control, Pest Repellent for Rat, Mice, Cat, Dog, Deer with Motion Sensor & Intruder Alarm (UK PLUG)

My next door neighbour is an animal lover and has always left seed out to feed small birds. Recently she has taken to leaving larger amounts of food out and has attracted seagulls, crows and feral pigeons. Unfortunately she isn't the most approachable person, so I decided on buying an electronic scarer rather than having any confrontational visits with her. To be honest, the reviews of all the sonic and ultrasonic scarers are very mixed and I was not 100% sure this one would actually do the job, but I thought I'd try one and see for myself.I've had it working for 4 days now and it does seem to be doing a good job. I didn't particularly want to scare the smaller birds away from eating in the tree next door, but did want to get rid of the large birds which spend hours on the ground fighting over the dropped seed and then take off and cr*p all over our washing, so I placed the unit directly on the ground facing the tree at a distance of about 5 metres away. I have the audible sonic sound set to "off" and the ultrasonic pitch set at the higher end of the "birds" setting, during the daytime only (off at night). The results are quite obvious and exactly what I wanted to achieve. I've switched it off a couple of times , just to see whether the birds return, and they do come back within a few hours but leave as soon a s it is switched back on again.The small birds such as sparrows still hang on the feeder in the tree but the larger birds absolutely WILL NOT go near the tree on the ground. We've watched pigeons walk towards the tree and suddenly stop still, then fly away without attempting to get close to the seed. Seagull have not even bothered to land since the unit has been active. It hasn't affected the nearby nesting birds and their young, which still tweet in the morning while the parents are collecting bugs from further up the garden, so all seems to be good in that respect.The neighbour has obviously noticed the unit sat on the ground, but has not mentioned it, so that all seems good too!I may be lucky in the fact that I have worked with sonar and so I have a basic understanding of how sound-waves work and are affected by various conditions. I would say that to get best results, although the unit sends a 170 degree signal from the front,it still needs to be facing directly towards the area that needs controlling, it must have no obstacles in the range between the unit and the target and that it will be less effective when it is raining. Thoughtful and careful siting of the unit will give much better results. The photo shows the unit sited next to a garden ornament, facing the tree at a distance of about five metres from the problem area.UPDATE August 2016:I've had this product working in the back garden for 3 months now and here's what I've noticed:1. It works best if you either change the ultrasonic frequency every week or two, or if you set it to scan through the complete range.2. It may not ALWAYS be the birds that are the issue, but the people who attract them by feeding them. So, as far as I'm concerned, the problem has now been completely eradicated by setting the audible noise at a level that actually became so annoying to the unapproachable neighbour it forced them to come round and agree to move the bird feeder as long as I turned the noise off! Agreement was reached and the problem has gone. Best money I ever spent!

We had quite a few foxes roaming our garden and wandering right up to the back door, which I found disconcerting as the garden is decent size so there should be no reason for them to come close to the house.I was initially very impressed with the Yard Sentinel as the foxes disappeared and so I ordered another one a couple of weeks later in order to cover another part of the garden and keep the pesky neighbourhood cats out, as they like to do their business around the garden, but a month after I bought the first one I noticed it was firing 24/7 when it was actually set to motion sensor mode and night time activation, so failed on two fronts.The second one failed with the motion sensor again firing constantly although the night sensor works, but the constant and constant sweep mode fail and do absolutely nothing.One device failing might have just been bad luck, but two devices failing is just bad workmanship.

My reason for buying this units is to keep other peoples cats out of my garden, which it does very effectively. I have nothing against cats per say, others that they are using my property as an official toilet .Access to the battery case and controls are difficult, as one has to wrestle the unit for some time and pain to close the back of the unit. This is a design fault and could have been better handled, by making it a screw lid rather than a badly designed clip-on.The settings to set up the unit to the sound level of specific animal one wishes to discourage are definitely made for the American or Canadian market. The It is not clear as one is moving the dial from one type of critter t the next that those animals in the lower range will not also be affected, rather than a specific mammal as per the dial, e.g. cat/dog and not also bats. Here in the UK bats are under protection, sa they are on our red book list.I also find it very expensive, when compared to other units. In defence it does have additional feathers such as dialling the specific creature. Other units one can also dial up different sound frequencies, but no clear description.It is very battery hungry, and they use C class batteries, which are not common use these days, which leads to anoretic high maintenance expense.

As described and as picture. Only set up a couple of days but seems to be working so far.

I'm not yet convinced that this works ata ll. It was purchased to repel deer, but they are infrequent visitors and it hasn't yet been poperly tested to this effect. However the red light seems to be permannently on, and seems to be flashing whenever there is movement of plants and leaves casued by the wind. I understood the red light only came on when there is animal movement detected.Have now revised my rating from 3 stars to 1. Very disappointed. The back case is not a good fit when changing batteries - it s waterproofing depends only on a lip edging over the perimeter of the main box so not sure how long this will last. But main reason fro one star is the device now seems to have stopped working completely, even when testing waving a hand over the front, after just a few weeks.I have restored my 3 stars, as the supplier - who has given a quick resposne and despatched a replacement - has informed me that batteries only last 2-3 weeks and this unit works better from the mains adaptor. This can be a problem when the unit is for out-of-doors use and is far from the house. However we sahll see, as I have yet to test the replacement when it arrives.5 stars for supplier response and serivce.