DIY Thread - Let's see your "Inventions".

[perchie.girl]

My Husband loves me. He built this for my chicks that are coming soon. SO EXCITED!

Oooh Nice Nice hubby too. I love the arch over bar for supporting the heat lamp AAND the center bar that goes across the middle... No Wait that is two lids over the top... EVEN Better. If need be you could drop a partition in across the middle for smaller broods or even doing two breeds separate... even just a pvc rectangle with plastic hardware cloth would work.

OH and Welcome to BYC from San Diego High desert....

deb

 

[Cluckies]

My Husband loves me. He built this for my chicks that are coming soon. SO EXCITED!

Very nice! When you get chicks I learned to move the food and water away from the lamp so that they can go under it if they need. your set up is going to work great! Have fun with your new chicks!

Also is your light white? or red? always go with a red one. I can't tell for sure from the photo what color it is, it looks red though, so that is good.

 

[JeepDVL45]

This is a waterer I built that is similar to vehve's....bit I made this one out of a cooler...

I've been "testing" it for a few weeks....we've had some NASTY cold in my area









I took a 9qt cooler form WalMart (cost $9) then picked up a couple 2" PVC caps, some horizontal nipple waterers and a couple 2" PVC bulkheads. Cut the holes in the cooler and ran the bulkheads though (they're NOT watertight, so I had to silicone them in place)....this is a pic I have of it with just 1 of the waterers in...there are 2 installed with a vent in the top of the cooler.

While it is not freeze-PROOF, I can fill it with room-temp water, and put it out for my girls at 6AM before I leave for work, and at night when I put them in, it is still working. I just bring it back in the house with me at night and let it come to room temp, then bring it back out each morning. The only day I didn't make it a full day for me was when I brought it out at 6AM and it was -5F, with a high of 6F at 3PM. I don't have a pic of it completed, but I'll try to get one tonight.

 

[vehve]

Now that's a nice idea. Add a heater cable and it will be perfect, no need for carrying it back and forth. You probably wouldn't need a very high wattage.

 

[JeepDVL45]

I actually don't have power to my coop......if I did, I probably never would have though of doing this! (It, like yours, should work GREAT during the summer to keep water nice and cool during the hot months)

 

[vehve]

Yeah, that's another benefit if it gets hot enough for that to be a problem. I'm going to switch back to my normal waterer once we're back to warmer weather though, it doesn't get that hot here in the summer usually.

 

[JeepDVL45]

Here are a couple pics I snapped this morning to get a better view of it -- inside and out.

 

[tcstoehr]

Here's something I came up with. I wanted precise control of the pop door open and control times. I have an Ador1 which has control pins available to open and close the door. You just have to be able to connect them together to open the door, or disconnect them to close the door. As I happened to be playing with Arduino electronics I decided to make a chicken door timer project as a learning experience. The red and white wires at the bottom left of the picture run to the Ador1's door control pins. On this end, those wires are attached to a relay, which does nothing more than connect or disconnect those wires, but under my own control. The large black chip in the center is a microcontroller that was programmed using an Arduino setup. Inside that chip is a table of door-open and door-close times, covering each and every day of the year. Those times were generated by a separate program that calculates sunrise/sunset times for my latitude, and then offsets them to my own preference. The microcontroler runs a program that wakes up twice a day to open or close the door by signalling the relay. It knows the time and date by using the clock board on the left side of the picture. When not actively doing anything, which is 99.999% of the day, the on-board clock and relay are powered down and the microcontroller goes into a low-power, deep sleep. So the 4 AA battery pack should last at least two years, but I really can't say for sure how long.
This was recently installed in my coop and I still get a kick out seeing the door open or close at exactly the right moment, give or take a few seconds.

 

[perchie.girl]

Here's something I came up with. I wanted precise control of the pop door open and control times. I have an Ador1 which has control pins available to open and close the door. You just have to be able to connect them together to open the door, or disconnect them to close the door. As I happened to be playing with Arduino electronics I decided to make a chicken door timer project as a learning experience. The red and white wires at the bottom left of the picture run to the Ador1's door control pins. On this end, those wires are attached to a relay, which does nothing more than connect or disconnect those wires, but under my own control. The large black chip in the center is a microcontroller that was programmed using an Arduino setup. Inside that chip is a table of door-open and door-close times, covering each and every day of the year. Those times were generated by a separate program that calculates sunrise/sunset times for my latitude, and then offsets them to my own preference. The microcontroler runs a program that wakes up twice a day to open or close the door by signalling the relay. It knows the time and date by using the clock board on the left side of the picture. When not actively doing anything, which is 99.999% of the day, the on-board clock and relay are powered down and the microcontroller goes into a low-power, deep sleep. So the 4 AA battery pack should last at least two years, but I really can't say for sure how long.
This was recently installed in my coop and I still get a kick out seeing the door open or close at exactly the right moment, give or take a few seconds.

I love breadboards Great for tinkineing with electronics. Dad was the main one in the family... Radio Shack knew him by name.... LOL

Can you program or check on status from your computer? Or does it stand alone. There may be times you dont want that door to open for what ever reason.

deb

 

[Leahs Mom]

Wow...I need an electronics person to set one of these up for me!