Automatic Chicken Coop Door - Auto Closes Coop - Beta Version 1.0

[Eggcelent10]

Hi BYC. I'm new here... today. I am looking for a good solution and this may be it. My husband and I are building a new house on a good sized property. Beautiful wide open area. Problem is (besides coyotes and raccoons) our chickens will no longer have a property fence. So we are going to build a new coop and run. I asked that he install a solar powered automatic motor. He thought I was nuts. I did a little looking around and found this Addamotor motor to be the only one designed just for it.

I did find a site that sells them cheaper than AddAMotor. Its here. (I don't know if I did that right???)

Has anyone tried this motor?

I'm wondering if anyone knows about hooking it up to a small solar panel too. Or is that another forum?

Thanks,

Alexis

Oh, BTW, 2 RIR, 1 Australorp, 1 Dark Cornish, and 1 White Rock, 3 cats, 1 ridgeback, 3 teenagers, 1 husband, 5 gekkos, 1 nasty snake, and 19 fish.

 

[Renron]

I have used the X-10 controllers previously, I would not bet my chickens lives on it. Rather 'twitchy.
There are better solutions inside this thread.

OOps, spoke too soon, I thought it was controlled by the 120V / X-10 technology. My bad. Given that it is powered by a "wall wart" transformer, as long as it's DC and not AC after being transformed, it would be easy to get the needed voltage from small motorcycle size batteries in series and then trickle charge them during the day from a PhotoVoltaic cell.
I like the "stops" feature. If one were clever, (i'm not) a light sensor could be wired in lieu of the timer circuit......................

Ron
Still looking for a home to build my chicken coop....,

 

[Dogfish]

Built an auto door last night using the Add-a-motor D20. Set up, install and adjustment of the motor took all of 10 minutes. Also added a lock to keep out coons and yotes. The door will only open if the string is pulled.

Yes, you could do it for less, but I wanted to be done. Wish I would have found that price on the D20. Nice score!

 

[Eggcelent10]

Quote:
Yes, it's the cheapest I found. But has anyone hooked it up to a solar panel? I already bought one from that site, figuring I'll work out the solar part after I receive it.

Thanks!

 

[beesong]

I'm going to order one of these to try on my coop. The pop doors are all lift-up flaps, which should work fine, except that I'm wondering about the possibility of a predator still being able to get inside at night by pulling at the door. Has anyone tried the Add-a-Motor with a pop door that lifts up instead of slides down in a channel?

 

[Doopy]

Quote:
Hi beesong and welcome to the discussion group. If you want to see a swinging type (hinge on top) door in action you can go to youtube.com and do a search for chicken coop doors (or something like that). Also there are self-locking devices for the slide-up-and-down type doors that can be used with the add-a-motor arrangement. You will have to go over all the posts in this thread to see many different ideas that people have tried. Take your time and you can learn a lot from this thread. I realize that there are many pages to look at but that's just the way it is. Good luck and please show us your final set-up. We love pictures and movies here.

 

[Organics North]

Quote:
Yes, it's the cheapest I found. But has anyone hooked it up to a solar panel? I already bought one from that site, figuring I'll work out the solar part after I receive it.

Thanks!

Hey gang,
Nice Thread!

So those of you that have the add a motor D20 can you tell us the DC motor voltage of the transformer you plug into the wall for AC use?

I may be interested in this motor if it is 12 V DC or 24 V DC for battery/solar use.

IF..... I can not figure out how to make a circuit to switch voltage from + to - and reverse a motor on my own. (I have a great little DC motor, just can not figure out how to reverse the voltage after it hits a limit switch.)


Thanks for any and all help..

ON

 

[Renron]

Flip / Flop relay will do it automatically for you!

 

[Renron]

Here's another example somewhat simpler,

Ron

 

[Organics North]

Thanks!
I should have remembered that.. It has only been 25 years since I was in electro-mechanical tec school....

ON