Adore1 automatic coop door anybody else have it?

[SFBayArea]

Hey guys, if you have same door have you ever run into the issue of door closing at night?
I've purchased coop with the Adore1 automatic door. At first it was working fine, however, now it stopped closing. It is opening in the morning no problem, however, at night it blinks red light and not closing the door, so I have to do it manually. I did change the battery to a brand new and still same thing.

Any ideas how to fix it?

Thank you.

 

[Eggsoteric]

I had that problem, turns out, hubby inadvertently put it in manual mode and forgot to take it out of manual mode. Here's a link to the user's manual. Hope you're able to resolve the issue. We absolutely love our Ador1, so much so, ordered another for our current chicken tractor build.

http://adorstore.com/pages/ador-user-s-manual

 

[SFBayArea]

I had that problem, turns out, hubby inadvertently put it in manual mode and forgot to take it out of manual mode. Here's a link to the user's manual. Hope you're able to resolve the issue. We absolutely love our Ador1, so much so, ordered another for our current chicken tractor build.

http://adorstore.com/pages/ador-user-s-manual

Hm, manual mode? If it is in manual mode should it be both morning and evening manual mode to open and close? It auto opens door every morning no problem, however, evening I have to do it manually.

 

[tcstoehr]

If it was in "manual mode" it wouldn't open or close ever by itself.
I would first make sure it was quite dark for several hours and see if it closed by that time. You've maybe done this already.
There's another programming option for light sensitivity. It will close earlier and open later. That might be worth a shot just to see what it does. It's programming option #3 which is sort of a pain to do but not really so bad once you get used to it. It's possible that the circuit board is failing in one mode, but might work in another. I have seen this happen myself. Try programming option #3. If this "works" for you, I would blame the circuit board. Maybe you can live with it in this mode.
My experience with the Ador1 is that it is a fan-freaking-tastic door... when it works. Some percentage of units have a defective circuit board. Mine did which caused excessive current draw, measured with a multimeter. Also one programming option I used would not work. Both issues were fixed with a new circuit board ordered at my own expense. It has now run flawlessly for 18 months, but I've heard more than a few other folks complaining.

 

[tcstoehr]

Here's another test you can try. Open the Ador panel and disconnect the battery. Now look at the circuit board which is mounted vertically on the right side of the battery compartment. There is a row of electronic connector pins sticking up along that board. They are numbered 1-6, #1 is furthest away from you, #6 is the closest. You should notice a plastic jumper sitting on top of pins 1 & 2. This jumper simply connects those two pins. Remove the jumper by pulling it straight up and off. Careful... if you drop it you may never see it again.

Now reconnect the battery. The door should close and stay closed. The reason being that without pins 1&2 connected, the Ador is now looking at the voltage across pins 2&3. It is assuming that you are not using the built-in light sensor but instead have installed your own device across pins 2&3. Since there is nothing there, that tells the Ador that it is pitch dark and the door should close.

If that works, now put that jumper back across pins 2&3, which connects them. This will make the Ador think that it is daylight and it should now open the door and stay open. Did it beep? It should before opening or closing. Repeat the jumper on and off procedure a few times and see if it responds.

If these things are not working, your circuit board is very likely hosed. No need to continue. If it is working continue below.

The first 5 minutes after battery connecting the Ador is in "test mode" which makes it very responsive and uses a bit more power. So wait 5 minutes and maybe a few more for good measure. You are now in low power operation mode which is less responsive, and also does some light sample averaging before it decides the door should open or close. So now try the jumper test again, do NOT disconnect the battery. It may take as long as 10-15 minutes before it decides to operate the door in one direction, and up to 5 minutes in the other direction. I don't remember which. So if it doesn't respond in say 20 minutes, you're done, it's not working.

When your done testing, put the jumper back on pins 1&2 and cycle the battery connection. Contact Ador via email from their web site and tell them what your first problem was, and the results of the above test, whether it failed or not.

Likely, either your light sensor is failing, or your circuit board has some issue. Either way, a new circuit board would be in order since the light sensor is component soldered directly onto the circuit board.

 

[AdorStore]

Here's another test you can try. Open the Ador panel and disconnect the battery. Now look at the circuit board which is mounted vertically on the right side of the battery compartment. There is a row of electronic connector pins sticking up along that board. They are numbered 1-6, #1 is furthest away from you, #6 is the closest. You should notice a plastic jumper sitting on top of pins 1 & 2. This jumper simply connects those two pins. Remove the jumper by pulling it straight up and off. Careful... if you drop it you may never see it again.

Now reconnect the battery. The door should close and stay closed. The reason being that without pins 1&2 connected, the Ador is now looking at the voltage across pins 2&3. It is assuming that you are not using the built-in light sensor but instead have installed your own device across pins 2&3. Since there is nothing there, that tells the Ador that it is pitch dark and the door should close.

If that works, now put that jumper back across pins 2&3, which connects them. This will make the Ador think that it is daylight and it should now open the door and stay open. Did it beep? It should before opening or closing. Repeat the jumper on and off procedure a few times and see if it responds.

If these things are not working, your circuit board is very likely hosed. No need to continue. If it is working continue below.

The first 5 minutes after battery connecting the Ador is in "test mode" which makes it very responsive and uses a bit more power. So wait 5 minutes and maybe a few more for good measure. You are now in low power operation mode which is less responsive, and also does some light sample averaging before it decides the door should open or close. So now try the jumper test again, do NOT disconnect the battery. It may take as long as 10-15 minutes before it decides to operate the door in one direction, and up to 5 minutes in the other direction. I don't remember which. So if it doesn't respond in say 20 minutes, you're done, it's not working.

When your done testing, put the jumper back on pins 1&2 and cycle the battery connection. Contact Ador via email from their web site and tell them what your first problem was, and the results of the above test, whether it failed or not.

Likely, either your light sensor is failing, or your circuit board has some issue. Either way, a new circuit board would be in order since the light sensor is component soldered directly onto the circuit board.

Thank you Tcstoehr for composing that test sequence. Good job and good idea about using the jumper across pins 2 & 3 to test the response to the light input. However, I must clarify and edit some of what you said, for those who may want to follow your procedure.

The suggestion to use a jumper on pins 2&3 to see the door open and close, is a good idea, but it doesn't test very much... certainly not the light sensor, neither: internal nor external. And it would be very very unusual for it to fail the test. But TCStoehr is correct that the board has failed if it failed the test, but just interrupt power and do this test in the first few minutes while it is in the mode of responding immediately.

The ADOR is designed for you to test the light sensing and the instructions tell you to do when it is dark, and that in the first few minutes of power up. It will respond very quickly to light and darkness for the first few minutes. The testing you suggest after 5 minutes is unnecessary and will try the patience of someone trying to verify that their light sensing works. If you try to do this in the daytime, you are very likely to not be able to make it dark enough to make it close. Do it at night (and bring a flashlight).

Second of all, out of many many thousands of ADORs out there, I have never seen a sensor that quit working. On boards older than May 2015, some boards have shown susceptibility to moisture and dust residue that puts an invisible film on the board over time. That invisible film "shorts out" the sensor and makes it register a little bit of light even in darkness. The board can be cleaned but the best long term solution I recommend is to upgrade to the newer board. The jumper on pins 1 & 2 may have an intermittent connection due to exposure to atmosphere over time, so if the door doesn't close at night if may be due to needing to slide the jumper up and down on the pins a few times to clean off the connection. That is very rarely a problem, but on older boards it is possible.

Sometimes people use the external sensor. If they mount it so that rain can get inside the insulation around the external sensor, the water can short out the sensor. It can usually be cleaned up and insulated with heat shrink again -- a small project for a DIYer ... or buy a new sensor. You can test if the problem is the external sensor by unplugging it, and re-installing the jumper on 1 & 2. Then test the ADOR's reaction to light using the internal sensor. If it works with the internal sensor and not the external sensor, you know the problem is in the external sensor. I have had people sometimes not be careful about making sure the plug the jumper on pins 1 & 2...they get it off by one pin. ...or they plug the sensor on 1&2 instead of 2 & 3. And the white wire MUST be on pin 2.

Most the time someone suspects the door does not operate automatically, it has been due to other sources of light (keeping it open at night) or a flaky motor that works great sometimes and sometimes does not. If a motor goes flaky at all, it is time to change it out -- don't trust it.

If the problem is due to some other artificial source of light, then there are some common sense measures to rule that out ...like cut off your yard light for a few nights and see if that was the cause. However, I recommend doing the light test at night and test it with the yard light (or whatever it is) ON and don't stand in the way to make a shadow. That's the way to rule out artificial light...or sometimes an infrared heat lamp inside the coop can shine through the doorway and light up the outside enough to be seen by ADOR -- just move the heat lamp so it doesn't do that.

But if the problem is actually a flaky motor, at least the motor is very easily replaceable. If the unit is under warranty of course we will send you a new one and all you need is a screwdriver to swap it out. A good way to see if the motor is working well is to momentarily press the button to open/close and do it many times, and see if it ever stutters or stops -- it should NEVER not open or close completely in one fell swoop motion. A lazy way to test it is to program number 21. It isn't really a "Program" as outlined in the instructions but you set it as if it were a program. ie you interrupt battery power with your finger on the button -- when power is up, let go of the button and then start pumping the button..21 times. ADOR will go Down/Up from top to bottom continuously forever until you stop it by interrupting battery power. Let it go for 5 minutes and keep an eye on it...It should never hiccup. If it does, and you aren't sure, you can send me a video to (832)444-0192 and I will be able to tell you -- but a hiccup generally means the motor needs to be replaced. Motors can last "forever" or a few years, or fail in the warranty period. But it is extremely easy to swap out and you know, "stuff happens" so what you think is a light sensing problem might be the motor and please you need to rule it out.

One last thing, and maybe I should have mentioned first... the light sensor can easily be bent so that it doesn't look directly out the opening in the cover. If so, bend it back in place ... the whole board sometimes does not line up with the lid, perfectly... the board can be bent (usually to the left) so the LED and SENSOR look out the openings accurately. The symptom of a bent sensor will be that it opens late and closes early, but it still works automatically.

I apologize for the long winded text here. I do have some videos that make this quicker and easier to digest -- "my bad" I haven't posted them yet. Fortunately, most customers don't have problems or go years before they need to diagnose something, but the ADOR1 is designed to be easily maintainable for the long run.

- ROD