8 ms·

Building an automatic chicken coop door opener

126 points by PascLeRasc 8y ago

davewasthere 8y ago
Annoyingly, doesn't mention how it counts the chickens. :)
- codeulike 8y ago
  It has a light sensor, so it assumes that once its dark enough, the chickens will have come inside of their own accord. Based on chickens I've met, this is probably accurate.
  - wiredfool 8y ago
    When I did it, I just closed the door at ~nautical~ civil twilight. The chickens come home to roost before that, and the predators (raccoons) generally were later than that. My design was Raspberry PI -> sensor/power board -> battery powered drill. And an extra long usb cable to get the wifi dongle to the other side of the roost, because when the chickens were in the coop, they absorbed enough wifi signal to make it drop off the network. Edit -- changed which twilight. Also, code here: https://github.com/wiredfool/coop-door https://github.com/wiredfool/coop-door Unfortunately, schematics and physical door design are lost to several moves.
    - codeulike 8y ago
      TIL chickens are wi-fi jammers
      - icebraining 8y ago
        All sacks of meat, humans included, are to some degree. We're made of a lot of water.
gadders 8y ago
Depends what you value your time at, but I've had two ChickenGuard automatic door openers for years now, and they've worked perfectly: https://www.chickenguard.com/ https://www.chickenguard.com/
- StavrosK 8y ago
  This project probably had a negative cost.
- kw71 8y ago
  I'm glad it works, but this is the exact product I thought he was trying to avoid buying. While a lot of thought and development probably went into chickenguard, it ain't cheap.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    The range of prices is £95.83 to £129.16, not including shipping or the door kit. Higher than DIY, but seems reasonable to me.
    - gadders 8y ago
      If they only lasted a year, I would have said they were a rip off. However, we've had ours 4-5 years now, I think? Only thing we've had to do is change the battery and I think twice untangle the cord that raises the door - probably because a chicken banged the door and caused a loop in the string.
- code_duck 8y ago
  Heck, why not just go to the store and buy some eggs?
  - 3chelon 8y ago
    Because there's simply no comparison in taste. Supermarket eggs taste like plastic in comparison to home-laid ones. Plus the hens recycle all your waste food into fresh eggs daily. What's not to like?
pieterhg 8y ago
Where is the video? (I'm on mobile Safari)
- oneeyedpigeon 8y ago
  https://vimeo.com/301639731 https://vimeo.com/301639731
kabouseng 8y ago
Reminds me of the story of a farmer asking if an engineer can help him identify sick ostriches on his farm. So to identify a sick ostrich, it doesn't eat anymore, so the engineer develops a tilt sensor that you strap to the ostriche's neck, and if it doesn't tilt enough times a day the ostrich didn't eat and a LED would light up red indicating the ostrich is sick and requires the farmers attention. Now the problem is to separate the sick ostriches from the healthy ones. So the thinking is you connect the ostrich camp with a narrow passage to another camp, and put out food in the other camp and as the ostriches move to the new camp you capture and divert the sick ones. Turns out that when you put out food in the new camp, only the healthy ostriches will move to the new camp and the sick ones will stay behind because they are in any case not interested in food.... which negates the need for engineer and his sensor in the first place :D
- Wiles_7 8y ago
  That reminds me of this story about removing empty boxes from a production line. https://userweb.cs.txstate.edu/~br02/cs1428/ShortStoryForEngineers.htm https://userweb.cs.txstate.edu/~br02/cs1428/ShortStoryForEng...
  - EADGBE 8y ago
    > and six months (and $8 million) later a fantastic solution was delivered — on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. I don't believe this story
  - gmiller123456 8y ago
    Funny, but obviously not real. If the guys were tired of "tired of walking over every time the bell rang", the number of defects detected wouldn't be 0.
    - brokenmachine 8y ago
      1.Bell is ringing too much and people are tired of walking over: defects > 0 2.Put fan there to blow empty boxes: now defects == 0 I don't see the problem.
dirktheman 8y ago
Nice project! Needs to be battery operated and last for at least two weeks (14 days): UNOs are notoriously power-hungry. It's highly unlikely that 4 AA batteries can power an Arduino UNO full-time AND open/close the coop door. Maybe with some advanced deep-sleep-cycle, but I'd love to know more about this. I also fail to see why he didn't use a cheap ESP-board. They're usually cheaper than Arduinos (as in: below 5 bucks), have an onboard WiFi chip and they run Arduino code just fine. You get a couple of pinouts less, but since he's only using a sensor and a stepper motor this won't be a problem. If I were to make this, I'd go with a nodeMCU and a cheap solar charging setup. Probably would fit in the budget, too.
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  > UNOs are notoriously power-hungry... Maybe with some advanced deep-sleep-cycle, but I'd love to know more about this. The naive Arduino code has two basic functions setup() and loop(). Putting your main code in loop results in a busy wait that spins up 100% of the CPU all the time. It's also running all the peripherals all the time. You want to use "avr/sleep.h" and "avr/power.h" to put the processor to sleep with peripherals off (except the one which will wake up the processor). See http://www.gammon.com.au/power http://www.gammon.com.au/power for a nice tutorial. Opening these headers and their source in the avr-gcc libraries and comparing to the documentation on the processor is a good exercise in getting right down to the metal of how the processor manages power. You also want to get rid of the ancient 7805 regulator; many clones use a better LDO voltage regulator to alleviate the problems with high standby current.
- opencl 8y ago
  He also seemed very concerned about the cost of an RTC module at ~$15 but they're readily available for less than $1.
feistypharit 8y ago
Anyone interested doing something like this, I've also done this with a esp8266 and a linear actuator. Detailed how to: https://blog.garble.org/arduino-chicken-coop-hardware/ https://blog.garble.org/arduino-chicken-coop-hardware/ https://blog.garble.org/arduino-chicken-coop-hardware/ https://blog.garble.org/arduino-chicken-coop-hardware/ I've installed a few of these now and love em
metaphor 8y ago
I'd be very surprised if the motor and electronics last a season without fault.
3chelon 8y ago
I've had my own design of one of these up and running for about 5 years now. I should probably write it up. I used a normal (non-stepper) motor with some gearbox I found in an old cassette player. The door limits are detected using reed switches. It is solar powered, with a 12V lead-acid battery. I've had to replace that twice over the 5 years because winter tends to kill it. Since then I've added a winter trickle charge wire from the nearest outbuilding. The solar panel voltage into an ADC provides the daylight reading. An Arduino Nano provides the main control functions. It spends a lot of time in sleep mode, waking every 5 minutes to check light levels, and at night sleeps until a preset time when it makes sense to start checking for daylight again. It also has an XBee radio link to a Raspberry Pi which sends me email updates, keeps the Arduino's clock accurate (obviating the need for an RTC), and alerts me of any mechanical problems with the door mechanism. A common one is straw and other mess getting jammed in the door runners, and once a broken door mechanism. Over the years I've tweaked the opening/closing times to account for the hens' habits, and for predators. I've learned that the dawn/dusk opening technique is not enough on its own, it needs to know the time of day also. It opens at 6:30am or first light, whichever is latest. Too early in the summer and you're asking for fox trouble, and also the neighbours used to complain the cockerel would crow when it opened too early (sunrise can be before 4am in midsummer). My hens go to bed very early, so it closes before dark, and again at least by 7:30pm in the summer because foxes can be active by then. We live in the country and almost everyone near me has hens, but they rely on manual opening. They have all lost their entire flocks to foxes at least once in the time my automated door has been operational, but thankfully we have not. I have seen scratch marks on the sliding door indicating interested predators, but I think my timing is right to keep the coop closed when foxes are about.
- 3chelon 8y ago
  If I was building it now I'd use an ESP8266 to replace the Arduino, XBee and RPi for a faction of the cost.
  - bcheung 8y ago
    I'm wanting to use the ESP8266 more but most things I want to interface with are 5V so it is a little annoying have to incorporate logic level shifters. How you found an easier way to deal with it?
xg15 8y ago
> If price weren’t a constraint, I immediately would have chosen a cellular IoT board like the Particle Electron or Boron ($50). Connectivity to the cloud provides several advantages: I think we should question whether tech as a whole is moving in the right direction when the first question for building a time-controlled, battery-operated chicken door opener is "how do I connect it to the internet?" (Sorry for the sarcasm, otherwise, it's a really cool project though)
- mitjak 8y ago
  i mean, yes? but also his concerns around clock drift and email notifications are legit.
  - jschwartzi 8y ago
    He could probably synchronize his RTC to the GPS system. GPS works by sending a clock signal plus satellite ID from each satellite. Devices using GPS then use an ephemeris to determine the location of each satellite and then calculate the relative position of the receiver.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      There are also time signal radio stations like WWVB, which are used by millions of devices to sync their clocks.
- jaclaz 8y ago
  If I am allowed some sarcasm as well, that is anyway the "old" approach, a more modern one would involve (besides the connection to the cloud) a camera, a database of "known" chickens and an AI (possibly a neural network) to identify (besides matching the actual authorized chicken wanting to enter with the image in the database) "chicken like" animals from "fox like" and similar ...
hihungryimdad 8y ago
Really fascinated by this kind of stuff, but getting into it seems really overwhelming. I think it would be something really fun for me and the kids to do together, does anyone have any personal beginner resources to recommend? Of course I'll do the googles too.
- ptaffs 8y ago
  You might want to seek out a local maker space? Is the USA these aren't too uncommon. Or, with the kids, take things apart and rebuild them, modify them. Unscrew, unclip, use a solder iron to remove components. Hours of fun. Maybe since we care nowadays, first check (google) for toxic materials such as Asbestos or lead or mercury.
- jon-wood 8y ago
  Like software development the best approach is to learn a concept at a time and then put them together into something bigger. Start off just with an Arduino and some basic LEDs and switches - that'll teach you the basics of connecting things together (if you're really at the beginning don't even involve an Arduino, just get do it all on a breadboard). Once you're comfortable with that maybe add some more exotic inputs and outputs, like light sensors and motors. After that maybe replace your Arduino with an ESP32 which will give you wifi and bluetooth to interact with your system. Once you've spent a while doing that you should be in a good place to start on more complex projects - there are a few robot kits designed to have a Raspberry Pi mounted on them to make them programmable, or maybe look at ESPHomelib[1] to do some home automation. [1] https://esphomelib.com/ https://esphomelib.com/
- ericsibored 8y ago
  Adafruit has some great tutorials and beginner-friendly videos to teach the basics - the portable trellis soundboard is a fun music-related one
mbirch39 8y ago
our neighbor had an automatic door and the coyotes learned what time the doors opened. They were first in line for breakfast.
dpeckett 8y ago
Great project and all, and definitely something fun to work on, but this is a pretty questionable application for IOT (don't wish to discourage). What's the key metric here? The chicken coop opens and closes at the appropriate time of the day? How does IOT help solve that objective? There's some great parallels here to an MVP in the software world. As for my two cents, an alternative and more robust solution, could be put together with something like an aliexpress ambient light switch, limit switches, a recycled car battery, a trickle charge solar panel, and some relay logic.
- ergothus 8y ago
  I'm unclear on why this is a questionable usage. My wife keeps chickens, and going out morning and night to open the doors is...certainly not hard, but inconvenient (particularly the night one, as you often remember AFTER you've settled in for the night and must head out, regardless of weather. Skipping the occasional visit doesn't work either - they need to get out both for general happiness and foraging, and if you don't close the door, creatures kill your chickens. (This has happened to us twice, and we're in the middle of suburbia, albeit the Seattle variety with more wildlife than the average cul-de-sac) > The chicken coop opens and closes at the appropriate time of the day? It's closed sometime after chickens have entered for the night, which tends to go off of sunlight, and opens early enough that the chickens aren't literally cooped up when they want out. That's rough, but the machine doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to do as well or better than we humans do. As for what value does IOT add? Well, it can help confirm when it is/isn't working, but mostly it's that the cost is almost the same, at least for those of us without extensive electronics experience. Your alternative (I'm not sure how it's more robust) solution LOOKS cheaper, but I wouldn't know how to connect the parts and would likely screw up the amps/watts enough to break stuff and require replacement parts. For me, spending an extra $50 on parts is worth the saved time and effort - even as the $250 version that has no options for customization of behavior/interactions is NOT worth the saved time and effort. Probably - it should be noted I've been researching this topic (along with any way to ensure the chickens ARE all inside - if they get broody they may nest elsewhere, which ends poorly) for the past year but so far we're still doing it manually. I expect this to change over the holidays. > There's some great parallels here to an MVP in the software world. Only in the vague "is this adding enough value to be worth it?" sort of way, but as the answer is "it depends" I'm not seeing the great learning opportunity you're implying.
hackeric 8y ago
Very creative and useful project. The Internet of Poultry (IoP) has finally arrived:)
- gh02t 8y ago
  Honestly, farming is probably the place where IoT makes the most sense. Especially for very environmentally sensitive processes like winemaking, large sensor networks and data analytics offer a lot of value to the farmer.
  - jschwartzi 8y ago
    You can do a lot of the same stuff with Bluetooth Low Energy and avoid putting your entire winery on the internet. I really like BLE because it's a very straightforward set of protocols for building sensor networks and sending/receiving data.
    - gh02t 8y ago
      LoRa is probably the way to go for farmers, given the range requirements. No need to connect to the Internet regardless.
  - asdff 8y ago
    It won't be too long in the future when the most productive farms are run by a couple local people who maintain the equipment, and every current labor-based task handling the livestock or produce is completely automatic. Imagine the power of knowing exactly every perturbation that a given crop or animal might have experienced and compare it to its yield. Eliminating variables like the productivity of the individual farmhand would go a long way to better control and extend our food supply.
josephv 8y ago
Cool project, but is it a failure for one of the requirements being that it costed under $50 and title says it costed $100?
- sketchet 8y ago
  I believe it was $50 for the door and the remaining $50 was for the parts.
ndespres 8y ago
My coop is outfitted with one of these automatic door kits: https://chickendoors.com/product/right-standard-pullet-shut-door/?gclid=CjwKCAiA0O7fBRASEiwAYI9QAhx1WldAnxw36kfxXPT6tfBQAQ5zuvg8KaQ-QMzjUr93ty9jtWktrhoCaWMQAvD_BwE https://chickendoors.com/product/right-standard-pullet-shut-... It opens at daylight, closes at dusk. Adjustable tolerances in either direction which I need to adjust occasionally but not often, like after DST changes to allow the door to stay open longer while the chickens get used to the shorter days, ensuring they can get inside before the door shuts, with darkness falling earlier. Small solar charger and battery keep it operational. I understand the impulse of the author to design something complicated, but practically speaking there is no need to remotely control the opening of the coop door over the internet, especially if you have a photoresistor already to detect daylight.
- InitialLastName 8y ago
  Not sure I understand; if the coop is opening at dawn and closing at dusk, why does it need to adjust for DST? From the chickens' perspective, the sunset time doesn't change substantially at the moment of DST change.
pvaldes 8y ago
The biggest problem is to convince chicken to go sleep at the coop instead in its favourite tree.
henripro 8y ago
I used a raspberry pi, a controller board and a linear actuator to create a similar solution. I also coded up the door lock, but turns out the linear actuator has enough resistance to stay closed on it's own. https://github.com/HenriPro/ChickenCoopDoor https://github.com/HenriPro/ChickenCoopDoor
bcheung 8y ago
How does the track mechanism work? Is that just a string being wound around the motor shaft? I've been playing around with Arduino and find the electronics easy but it's really hard to get good information about linear motion in terms of what parts to get and what wheels / accessories are compatible / needed with what tracks. Very few resources out there and I've ordered so many incompatible tracks, wheels, carriages, etc because I couldn't find any information on what mates with what.

126 points by PascLeRasc 8y ago

davewasthere 8y ago

Annoyingly, doesn't mention how it counts the chickens. :)

codeulike 8y ago
It has a light sensor, so it assumes that once its dark enough, the chickens will have come inside of their own accord. Based on chickens I've met, this is probably accurate.
- wiredfool 8y ago
  When I did it, I just closed the door at ~nautical~ civil twilight. The chickens come home to roost before that, and the predators (raccoons) generally were later than that. My design was Raspberry PI -> sensor/power board -> battery powered drill. And an extra long usb cable to get the wifi dongle to the other side of the roost, because when the chickens were in the coop, they absorbed enough wifi signal to make it drop off the network. Edit -- changed which twilight. Also, code here: https://github.com/wiredfool/coop-door https://github.com/wiredfool/coop-door Unfortunately, schematics and physical door design are lost to several moves.
  - codeulike 8y ago
    TIL chickens are wi-fi jammers
    - icebraining 8y ago
      All sacks of meat, humans included, are to some degree. We're made of a lot of water.

gadders 8y ago

Depends what you value your time at, but I've had two ChickenGuard automatic door openers for years now, and they've worked perfectly: https://www.chickenguard.com/ https://www.chickenguard.com/

StavrosK 8y ago
This project probably had a negative cost.
kw71 8y ago
I'm glad it works, but this is the exact product I thought he was trying to avoid buying. While a lot of thought and development probably went into chickenguard, it ain't cheap.
- tyingq 8y ago
  The range of prices is £95.83 to £129.16, not including shipping or the door kit. Higher than DIY, but seems reasonable to me.
  - gadders 8y ago
    If they only lasted a year, I would have said they were a rip off. However, we've had ours 4-5 years now, I think? Only thing we've had to do is change the battery and I think twice untangle the cord that raises the door - probably because a chicken banged the door and caused a loop in the string.
code_duck 8y ago
Heck, why not just go to the store and buy some eggs?
- 3chelon 8y ago
  Because there's simply no comparison in taste. Supermarket eggs taste like plastic in comparison to home-laid ones. Plus the hens recycle all your waste food into fresh eggs daily. What's not to like?

pieterhg 8y ago

Where is the video? (I'm on mobile Safari)

oneeyedpigeon 8y ago
https://vimeo.com/301639731 https://vimeo.com/301639731

kabouseng 8y ago

Reminds me of the story of a farmer asking if an engineer can help him identify sick ostriches on his farm. So to identify a sick ostrich, it doesn't eat anymore, so the engineer develops a tilt sensor that you strap to the ostriche's neck, and if it doesn't tilt enough times a day the ostrich didn't eat and a LED would light up red indicating the ostrich is sick and requires the farmers attention. Now the problem is to separate the sick ostriches from the healthy ones. So the thinking is you connect the ostrich camp with a narrow passage to another camp, and put out food in the other camp and as the ostriches move to the new camp you capture and divert the sick ones. Turns out that when you put out food in the new camp, only the healthy ostriches will move to the new camp and the sick ones will stay behind because they are in any case not interested in food.... which negates the need for engineer and his sensor in the first place :D

Wiles_7 8y ago
That reminds me of this story about removing empty boxes from a production line. https://userweb.cs.txstate.edu/~br02/cs1428/ShortStoryForEngineers.htm https://userweb.cs.txstate.edu/~br02/cs1428/ShortStoryForEng...
- EADGBE 8y ago
  > and six months (and $8 million) later a fantastic solution was delivered — on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. I don't believe this story
- gmiller123456 8y ago
  Funny, but obviously not real. If the guys were tired of "tired of walking over every time the bell rang", the number of defects detected wouldn't be 0.
  - brokenmachine 8y ago
    1.Bell is ringing too much and people are tired of walking over: defects > 0 2.Put fan there to blow empty boxes: now defects == 0 I don't see the problem.

dirktheman 8y ago

Nice project! Needs to be battery operated and last for at least two weeks (14 days): UNOs are notoriously power-hungry. It's highly unlikely that 4 AA batteries can power an Arduino UNO full-time AND open/close the coop door. Maybe with some advanced deep-sleep-cycle, but I'd love to know more about this. I also fail to see why he didn't use a cheap ESP-board. They're usually cheaper than Arduinos (as in: below 5 bucks), have an onboard WiFi chip and they run Arduino code just fine. You get a couple of pinouts less, but since he's only using a sensor and a stepper motor this won't be a problem. If I were to make this, I'd go with a nodeMCU and a cheap solar charging setup. Probably would fit in the budget, too.

LeifCarrotson 8y ago
> UNOs are notoriously power-hungry... Maybe with some advanced deep-sleep-cycle, but I'd love to know more about this. The naive Arduino code has two basic functions setup() and loop(). Putting your main code in loop results in a busy wait that spins up 100% of the CPU all the time. It's also running all the peripherals all the time. You want to use "avr/sleep.h" and "avr/power.h" to put the processor to sleep with peripherals off (except the one which will wake up the processor). See http://www.gammon.com.au/power http://www.gammon.com.au/power for a nice tutorial. Opening these headers and their source in the avr-gcc libraries and comparing to the documentation on the processor is a good exercise in getting right down to the metal of how the processor manages power. You also want to get rid of the ancient 7805 regulator; many clones use a better LDO voltage regulator to alleviate the problems with high standby current.
opencl 8y ago
He also seemed very concerned about the cost of an RTC module at ~$15 but they're readily available for less than $1.

feistypharit 8y ago

Anyone interested doing something like this, I've also done this with a esp8266 and a linear actuator. Detailed how to: https://blog.garble.org/arduino-chicken-coop-hardware/ https://blog.garble.org/arduino-chicken-coop-hardware/ https://blog.garble.org/arduino-chicken-coop-hardware/ https://blog.garble.org/arduino-chicken-coop-hardware/ I've installed a few of these now and love em

metaphor 8y ago

I'd be very surprised if the motor and electronics last a season without fault.

3chelon 8y ago

I've had my own design of one of these up and running for about 5 years now. I should probably write it up. I used a normal (non-stepper) motor with some gearbox I found in an old cassette player. The door limits are detected using reed switches. It is solar powered, with a 12V lead-acid battery. I've had to replace that twice over the 5 years because winter tends to kill it. Since then I've added a winter trickle charge wire from the nearest outbuilding. The solar panel voltage into an ADC provides the daylight reading. An Arduino Nano provides the main control functions. It spends a lot of time in sleep mode, waking every 5 minutes to check light levels, and at night sleeps until a preset time when it makes sense to start checking for daylight again. It also has an XBee radio link to a Raspberry Pi which sends me email updates, keeps the Arduino's clock accurate (obviating the need for an RTC), and alerts me of any mechanical problems with the door mechanism. A common one is straw and other mess getting jammed in the door runners, and once a broken door mechanism. Over the years I've tweaked the opening/closing times to account for the hens' habits, and for predators. I've learned that the dawn/dusk opening technique is not enough on its own, it needs to know the time of day also. It opens at 6:30am or first light, whichever is latest. Too early in the summer and you're asking for fox trouble, and also the neighbours used to complain the cockerel would crow when it opened too early (sunrise can be before 4am in midsummer). My hens go to bed very early, so it closes before dark, and again at least by 7:30pm in the summer because foxes can be active by then. We live in the country and almost everyone near me has hens, but they rely on manual opening. They have all lost their entire flocks to foxes at least once in the time my automated door has been operational, but thankfully we have not. I have seen scratch marks on the sliding door indicating interested predators, but I think my timing is right to keep the coop closed when foxes are about.

3chelon 8y ago
If I was building it now I'd use an ESP8266 to replace the Arduino, XBee and RPi for a faction of the cost.
- bcheung 8y ago
  I'm wanting to use the ESP8266 more but most things I want to interface with are 5V so it is a little annoying have to incorporate logic level shifters. How you found an easier way to deal with it?

xg15 8y ago

> If price weren’t a constraint, I immediately would have chosen a cellular IoT board like the Particle Electron or Boron ($50). Connectivity to the cloud provides several advantages: I think we should question whether tech as a whole is moving in the right direction when the first question for building a time-controlled, battery-operated chicken door opener is "how do I connect it to the internet?" (Sorry for the sarcasm, otherwise, it's a really cool project though)

mitjak 8y ago
i mean, yes? but also his concerns around clock drift and email notifications are legit.
- jschwartzi 8y ago
  He could probably synchronize his RTC to the GPS system. GPS works by sending a clock signal plus satellite ID from each satellite. Devices using GPS then use an ephemeris to determine the location of each satellite and then calculate the relative position of the receiver.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    There are also time signal radio stations like WWVB, which are used by millions of devices to sync their clocks.
jaclaz 8y ago
If I am allowed some sarcasm as well, that is anyway the "old" approach, a more modern one would involve (besides the connection to the cloud) a camera, a database of "known" chickens and an AI (possibly a neural network) to identify (besides matching the actual authorized chicken wanting to enter with the image in the database) "chicken like" animals from "fox like" and similar ...

hihungryimdad 8y ago

Really fascinated by this kind of stuff, but getting into it seems really overwhelming. I think it would be something really fun for me and the kids to do together, does anyone have any personal beginner resources to recommend? Of course I'll do the googles too.

ptaffs 8y ago
You might want to seek out a local maker space? Is the USA these aren't too uncommon. Or, with the kids, take things apart and rebuild them, modify them. Unscrew, unclip, use a solder iron to remove components. Hours of fun. Maybe since we care nowadays, first check (google) for toxic materials such as Asbestos or lead or mercury.
jon-wood 8y ago
Like software development the best approach is to learn a concept at a time and then put them together into something bigger. Start off just with an Arduino and some basic LEDs and switches - that'll teach you the basics of connecting things together (if you're really at the beginning don't even involve an Arduino, just get do it all on a breadboard). Once you're comfortable with that maybe add some more exotic inputs and outputs, like light sensors and motors. After that maybe replace your Arduino with an ESP32 which will give you wifi and bluetooth to interact with your system. Once you've spent a while doing that you should be in a good place to start on more complex projects - there are a few robot kits designed to have a Raspberry Pi mounted on them to make them programmable, or maybe look at ESPHomelib[1] to do some home automation. [1] https://esphomelib.com/ https://esphomelib.com/
ericsibored 8y ago
Adafruit has some great tutorials and beginner-friendly videos to teach the basics - the portable trellis soundboard is a fun music-related one

mbirch39 8y ago

our neighbor had an automatic door and the coyotes learned what time the doors opened. They were first in line for breakfast.

dpeckett 8y ago

Great project and all, and definitely something fun to work on, but this is a pretty questionable application for IOT (don't wish to discourage). What's the key metric here? The chicken coop opens and closes at the appropriate time of the day? How does IOT help solve that objective? There's some great parallels here to an MVP in the software world. As for my two cents, an alternative and more robust solution, could be put together with something like an aliexpress ambient light switch, limit switches, a recycled car battery, a trickle charge solar panel, and some relay logic.

ergothus 8y ago
I'm unclear on why this is a questionable usage. My wife keeps chickens, and going out morning and night to open the doors is...certainly not hard, but inconvenient (particularly the night one, as you often remember AFTER you've settled in for the night and must head out, regardless of weather. Skipping the occasional visit doesn't work either - they need to get out both for general happiness and foraging, and if you don't close the door, creatures kill your chickens. (This has happened to us twice, and we're in the middle of suburbia, albeit the Seattle variety with more wildlife than the average cul-de-sac) > The chicken coop opens and closes at the appropriate time of the day? It's closed sometime after chickens have entered for the night, which tends to go off of sunlight, and opens early enough that the chickens aren't literally cooped up when they want out. That's rough, but the machine doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to do as well or better than we humans do. As for what value does IOT add? Well, it can help confirm when it is/isn't working, but mostly it's that the cost is almost the same, at least for those of us without extensive electronics experience. Your alternative (I'm not sure how it's more robust) solution LOOKS cheaper, but I wouldn't know how to connect the parts and would likely screw up the amps/watts enough to break stuff and require replacement parts. For me, spending an extra $50 on parts is worth the saved time and effort - even as the $250 version that has no options for customization of behavior/interactions is NOT worth the saved time and effort. Probably - it should be noted I've been researching this topic (along with any way to ensure the chickens ARE all inside - if they get broody they may nest elsewhere, which ends poorly) for the past year but so far we're still doing it manually. I expect this to change over the holidays. > There's some great parallels here to an MVP in the software world. Only in the vague "is this adding enough value to be worth it?" sort of way, but as the answer is "it depends" I'm not seeing the great learning opportunity you're implying.

hackeric 8y ago

Very creative and useful project. The Internet of Poultry (IoP) has finally arrived:)

gh02t 8y ago
Honestly, farming is probably the place where IoT makes the most sense. Especially for very environmentally sensitive processes like winemaking, large sensor networks and data analytics offer a lot of value to the farmer.
- jschwartzi 8y ago
  You can do a lot of the same stuff with Bluetooth Low Energy and avoid putting your entire winery on the internet. I really like BLE because it's a very straightforward set of protocols for building sensor networks and sending/receiving data.
  - gh02t 8y ago
    LoRa is probably the way to go for farmers, given the range requirements. No need to connect to the Internet regardless.
- asdff 8y ago
  It won't be too long in the future when the most productive farms are run by a couple local people who maintain the equipment, and every current labor-based task handling the livestock or produce is completely automatic. Imagine the power of knowing exactly every perturbation that a given crop or animal might have experienced and compare it to its yield. Eliminating variables like the productivity of the individual farmhand would go a long way to better control and extend our food supply.

josephv 8y ago

Cool project, but is it a failure for one of the requirements being that it costed under $50 and title says it costed $100?

sketchet 8y ago
I believe it was $50 for the door and the remaining $50 was for the parts.

ndespres 8y ago

My coop is outfitted with one of these automatic door kits: https://chickendoors.com/product/right-standard-pullet-shut-door/?gclid=CjwKCAiA0O7fBRASEiwAYI9QAhx1WldAnxw36kfxXPT6tfBQAQ5zuvg8KaQ-QMzjUr93ty9jtWktrhoCaWMQAvD_BwE https://chickendoors.com/product/right-standard-pullet-shut-... It opens at daylight, closes at dusk. Adjustable tolerances in either direction which I need to adjust occasionally but not often, like after DST changes to allow the door to stay open longer while the chickens get used to the shorter days, ensuring they can get inside before the door shuts, with darkness falling earlier. Small solar charger and battery keep it operational. I understand the impulse of the author to design something complicated, but practically speaking there is no need to remotely control the opening of the coop door over the internet, especially if you have a photoresistor already to detect daylight.

InitialLastName 8y ago
Not sure I understand; if the coop is opening at dawn and closing at dusk, why does it need to adjust for DST? From the chickens' perspective, the sunset time doesn't change substantially at the moment of DST change.

pvaldes 8y ago

The biggest problem is to convince chicken to go sleep at the coop instead in its favourite tree.

henripro 8y ago

I used a raspberry pi, a controller board and a linear actuator to create a similar solution. I also coded up the door lock, but turns out the linear actuator has enough resistance to stay closed on it's own. https://github.com/HenriPro/ChickenCoopDoor https://github.com/HenriPro/ChickenCoopDoor

bcheung 8y ago

How does the track mechanism work? Is that just a string being wound around the motor shaft? I've been playing around with Arduino and find the electronics easy but it's really hard to get good information about linear motion in terms of what parts to get and what wheels / accessories are compatible / needed with what tracks. Very few resources out there and I've ordered so many incompatible tracks, wheels, carriages, etc because I couldn't find any information on what mates with what.