The hen House

Automatic Chicken Coop Door made from a power car antenna

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Bill Hedlund’s automatic chicken door opener keeps rats and hopefully predators out!

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The black lever mounted on the door serves as an automatic latch. When the opener lifts the door, the lever is pulled out of the way. When the opener lowers the door, it allows enough slack in the rope for the counterweight on the lever to pivot the lever and engage the lock pin on the left. The door then cannot be opened manually.

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backyardchickens.com

Building a coup door is easy and functional. go to http://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=29113 to view the coup and other videos of the coup.

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Go to http://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=29113 to view our coop and other videos of the coop.

backyardchickens.com

This is the second video installment of our chicken coop door. This is the automatic coop door using a Add-A-Motor 80 drapery motor [AAM80]. Hooked it up to a timer and now the door opens and closes automatically. Just another way to increase the cool factor of your chicken coop.

The first video was a manual door that can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHYa2PEJRHk Building a coop door is easy and functional.

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I built this automatic door opener for my chicken coop so I wouldn’t have to go out there and let them out in the morning before I go to work. Full details of the design are available at my blog here: http://www.fabiens.org/ckblog/?page_id=106

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After raccoons killed 3 of our birds over the past few years I finally build an auto chicken coop door closer. Here is the orginal plan: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/automatic-chicken-coop-door.php

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This unit that I designed and built uses a PIC16F684 micro, 3 AAA batteries, a solar cell array and a motor to automatically open the chicken house door every morning. “Morning” is detected when at least 30 minutes of dark is followed by at least 30 minutes of light, this is important to avoid false triggering due to torches, headlights, shadows etc.

The software also gives the motor a little 100mS “jiggle” every 30 minutes to reduce the possibility of ice causing a major jam.

Micro stays asleep for most of the time, and only wakes up every 2 seconds (due to a watchdog) and counts the number of wakeups to ensure that a light sample is taken every 4 minutes. Only a continuous sequence of 8 light or 8 dark readings will set or clear a day/night flag. Current consumption is around 10uA most of the time, and then around 500mA for 4 seconds during the motor operation. The door is opened until the limit switch is reached.

2 buttons (on the right hand side of the enclosure) allow for manual opening and closing. Any press of the buttons causes the PIC to come out of sleep immediately, ensuring instant reaction to button presses.

The door is opened by the motor and a simple pulley wheel with fishing line attached to the door. The door can’t be closed automatically, so it must be done manually while pressing the “close” button to unwind the pulley while the door is slid across by hand. The motor has a built in 300:1 gearbox to ensure high torque and low speed.

If the automatic opening function fails to reach the limit switch within 8 seconds, the motor is switched off anyway and the LED gives a “blink-blink-blink…….blink-blink-blink…..” to warn the owner of a jam. Any button press resets that condition.

The solar cells provide enough energy for several openings per day, so should be fine for the expected 1 op per day!

Enclosure is an IP67 rated box with a transparent lid. The only “breach” of the enclosure is a 0.5mm hole for the 0.4mm fishing line to exit.

All electronics and solar cells are sprayed with conformal coating, so a little damp shouldn’t be a problem.

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How To Install an Automatic Chicken Coop Door from AutomaticChickenCoopDoor.com, Automatic Chicken Coop Door

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