Dog Anti Bark Screen......

.... not a concept you come across every day :)

The background to this is that Maisie came to us as a rescue dog with a lot of baggage. She has been bred over generations to be a livestock guard dog whose mission is to warn the herder of any danger to the herd by barking, here lies one of the problems, her favourite occupation when in the house is watching window TV, any passing dog needs to be barked at!

We tried bark collars (not resorting to electric shock type) they work to an extent but she managed to pop 2 of them off her collar, a better method was required, an anti bark screen!

The parts required are:

• A piece of 5mm perspex around the size of the window to be screened
• A piece of LCD smart film, of similar size, with transformer
• Some pieces of 20mm and 5mm MDF
• Wood glue, screws and M4 trap nuts
• A strip of 1.5mm aluminium
• Remote control mains switch I had one spare from a set of four from reichelt that was perfect for the job

Tools required:

• Bandsaw/hand saw
• Router
• Pistol drill
• Screw driver bit

The LCD smart film needed to be squeegeed onto the sheet of perspex in the same way that tinted window film is installed (lots of videos on YT that cover this, I didn't film it as I was concentrating too hard on avoiding air bubbles).

With the router I cut a groove in a piece of MDF that will be the base, then cut the bottom edge of one of the MDF screen clamping uprights to fit snuggly into the slot.

Again with the router I cut a groove for the perspex to fit into and then some slots to feed the wiring from the smart screen to the transformer. I also cut a strip of aluminium to hold trap nuts to fix this together using M4 countersunk screws rather than using wood screws, (I always find using woodscrews in MDF to be a bit weak).

After screwing it all together it was time to plug in and give it a try.

I put the screen into the "dog TV" window and gave it a try, it works! If Masie starts to take an interest in a passing dog, I can just hide it with a press of a button on the remote control before she even starts barking!

Sorry about the bleached out start of the video, when I get closer you can see the effect.