The Nightly Routine

If you have ever lived on a property in cane toad territory, you know the routine. Every night after dark, you head out with a torch and a bag. You walk the yard, checking around the dog bowls, the garden taps, the veggie patch, the retaining walls. You collect what you can. You deal with them. And then you go to bed knowing that tomorrow night, you will do it all again.

We have been doing this for years on our hobby farm in Lowood, Queensland. And no matter how many toads we collected (ten, twenty, sometimes more in a single night) the population never seemed to budge. They just kept coming.

It is exhausting, unpleasant work. And after a while, we started asking the question that probably every toad-affected property owner has asked at some point.

”There Has to Be a Better Way”

A single female cane toad can lay over 30,000 eggs in one clutch. They breed multiple times a year. No matter how dedicated you are with a torch and a bucket, you cannot outcatch that kind of reproduction rate by hand.

We started thinking about what an automated solution might look like. The idea was simple in theory: a camera that watches for toads, some kind of AI that can tell a toad from a frog, and a mechanism to do something about it. In practice, building that turned out to be a much bigger project than we expected.

Early Prototypes

The first version was rough. Really rough. A camera bolted to a board, running on a Raspberry Pi, with a half-trained AI model that we had built ourselves. Neither of us were AI experts. We learned as we went.

Training the very first model meant going out into the backyard night after night, photographing toads from every angle, in every lighting condition, in every position. Hundreds and hundreds of images, all labelled by hand.

The excitement when the system made its first correct detection was something else. But it was quickly tempered by reality. The early model also detected shoes as toads. And garden hoses. And shadows.

Making It Work for Real

From that point, it was iteration after iteration. Improving the camera. Designing a proper housing that could survive outdoors in Queensland weather. Building the spray mechanism, a servo-controlled nozzle connected to a pump. Getting the targeting accurate enough to actually hit what the camera was seeing.

The safety system came out of necessity. We realised early on that we could not just build something that sprays at anything that moves. Native frogs, pets, other wildlife, they all visit the same spots toads do. The dual-layer AI verification, the safety pauses, the protection system for non-toad animals, all of that was born from real situations where we thought “we need to make sure this never happens.”

Testing was relentless. Rain. Cold. The brutal Queensland summer heat that would overheat components. Nights where the WiFi dropped out and the device needed to keep working independently. Bugs. Literally, cobwebs on the camera lens that made everything look like a toad.

Going Digital

Once the device itself was working reliably, we built the software around it. A cloud dashboard so you could see what the device was doing without having to go outside. The mobile app so you could set up and manage devices from your phone or the website. WiFi connectivity so detection images upload automatically.

Being able to wake up in the morning, open the app, and see exactly what happened overnight. That was the game changer for us. No more wondering if the toads came last night. No more heading out in the dark. Just check the dashboard with your morning coffee.

Where We Are Now

We have multiple units running on our property. The AI model is constantly improving as we collect more real-world data from devices in the field. And we are starting to help other Australians who are dealing with the same problem we were.

It is still a small operation. Just two of us, still based in Lowood, still testing on the same hobby farm where it all started. But the feedback from other property owners has been really encouraging. Turns out a lot of people are sick of the nightly toad run.

What Drives Us

We genuinely love Australian wildlife. We have seen firsthand the damage cane toads cause to native species. Goannas, snakes, frogs and even 30cm+ giant earthworms being eaten by a 15cm toad. That is what makes this more than just a tech project for us.

There is also something deeply satisfying about waking up and seeing that the device dealt with toads overnight while we slept. After years of doing it by hand, having a machine handle it feels like a small victory every single morning.

We believe that technology can help with environmental problems at a scale that manual effort simply cannot match. ToadTurret is not going to solve the cane toad crisis on its own, but it can take the nightly burden off property owners and contribute to broader control efforts, one backyard at a time.

Get Yours

If you are sick of the nightly toad run and want something that works while you sleep, head to our store to check out ToadTurret. We also sell solar kits, USB adapters, and replacement parts.

Got questions before you buy? Get in touch. We are always happy to chat.