Automatic chicken door DIY

[blakehaas]

Hi all.
I have an EGLU Cube coop and i love it. I live in Minnesota and when i bought the eglu cube they didnt have the automatic door add-on available yet. It finally came out but its winter and there is no way im taking half the cube apart to install that... I bought an automatic door opener from a company named hentronix. It was expensive but actually worked pretty well. That is until it got -10f and the battery just couldn't handle the weather. The gear also slipped and they told me i had to buy another one. I thought about how easy it would be for me to make my own. I am a software developer and I know that the components and design to open a door based on light levels is not too hard atleast in concept.

Anyway rambling aside. I spent about two weeks and I have Version 1 of a diy automatic chicken coop door opener and its open source for everyone. You can easily adapt this to work with different kinds of doors (sliding panels) etc with some basic changes.
Its designed to close the door at ~19 lux and open at 50 lux.

Here is the project site: https://github.com/blake-haas/ArduinoChickenDoor

Feel free to share and fork/ contribute your own diy solutions!

Oh and i forgot, the price! You can make one of these for well under $30.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Good info. I've been planning auto doors for a while. I'm leaning toward an Arduino fix. I do have a problem with opening and closing based on LUX. I worry that a late afternoon thunderstorm will lock the chickens out.
I once found a formula based on date, latitude and longitude. If I find it again, I'll share it with you.
My problem is that I'll need approximately 18 automatic doors. No wonder I've procrastinated so long.

 

[blakehaas]

Good info. I've been planning auto doors for a while. I'm leaning toward an Arduino fix. I do have a problem with opening and closing based on LUX. I worry that a late afternoon thunderstorm will lock the chickens out.
I once found a formula based on date, latitude and longitude. If I find it again, I'll share it with you.
My problem is that I'll need approximately 18 automatic doors. No wonder I've procrastinated so long.

The code i wrote is quite simple but it starts counting once it sees 19 lux or under. It has to see 19 lux or less 15 consecutive times (once per minute) before it initiates closing the door. If at any time it sees a light value higher than 19 lux, it starts the count over again. Yes there is a potential for a super super dark storm to lock out the birds. Chances are if it got that dark, they would have gone inside before the door closed anyway. It would have been 19 lux or under for 15 minutes which is lots of time for them to go inside. The code can be easily modified to wait 20 min, 30 minutes or whatever value you want as well.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

That, plus a storm that bad may have kept predators at bay until I could get home.