Auto Chicken Coop Door

[jthornton]

The hexchat app cost $10, so I passed on that. But it looks like you just go to freenode and join a channel? I think I'm in the right place. haha. This is all new to me.

I use Linux Mint on most of my PC's and on my work/shipping laptop I have a dual boot with Linux Mint and Windows 7. I always use Hexchat from linux so I didn't know they did the windows thing of charging lol.

One of the guys on the #linuxcnc channel suggested quassel and I tried it out and it seems pretty easy to get going on my Windows 7 PC and I was able to log in to ##chickens in a few minutes. For most channels you have to register with Freenode to be able to speak, ##chickens you don't have to register.

JT

 

[jthornton]

Looks great, so far! Looks like you have a Kreg jig. Maybe this will be a good excuse to get myself one!

To answer your questions from earlier; Windows 10. No monitor. Keyboard and mouse I'm good on. I have an old laptop and I was hoping to maybe somehow use that screen for the Pi. Not sure yet what to do there. Yep, he did give me the HDMI adapter as well as a small USB adapter. I've been so busy today I haven't even gotten a chance to do anything with it, yet. Pretty soon here I'll try and figure out what the heck I'm doing.

Yes the Kreg Jig makes this type of construction a breeze. Even the cheapest one works.

Does your Wndows 10 monitor have HDMI? I only have one monitor and use that when I have to set something up in the RPi that I can't do via SSH or my preferred method is to use SSHFS to mount the Rpi and just use a file manager to navigate from my Linux PC.

Here is a way to connect a laptop to the RPi using a VNC server I know it's all gobbly gook at this point but the VNC is a remote desktop so you can view the RPi screen from another computer via a LAN cable. It's a bit slow but it works and you only need it for a bit to set a few things.

JT

 

[jthornton]

Just an update, my door stopped working the other day then started back up then stopped again. I know the code is bullet proof as I've been using the door since May of 2017. Well this morning I found a Roundtuit in my pocket and cleaned out the PDZ and crawled in the horrible designed roost box (found on the internet looks like all the other crappy designs lol) and removed the door. I did have a dust shield over the motor, more to keep chickens from roosting on top of the motor but anyway, I sprayed some contact cleaner in the motor to clean the commutator off and it resumed working. So if you have a door that stops working it could be dust from the chickens on the commutator (the thing that conducts electricity from the brushes to the coils on the shaft.

JT