Help with Electricity for Automatic Coop

[Ifish]

Any chance you could take a pic of the transformer in the outlet?

 

[Big Bubba]

OK. My big mistake was trying to hook this up to an outlet. I think it could work this way but I would need two electrical outlets going. At the end of the day I was planning on it running it without using electricity from the house. I just wanted to get it going from the house first; which was a bad idea.

Eventually I plan to run it off solar power. For now I just decided to run down to the local hardware store and bought a battery for $20. Here is a link to one I bought - http://www.homedepot.com/p/UPG-SLA-12-Volt-F2-Terminal-Battery-UB1250/203770503. It now works like a charm.

When this is all done I'll post all the details. Might be helpful to show everyone the simplest type ever built.

Thanks to everyone for their help. It was very helpful.

 

[PapaChaz]

You might be thinking about AC power. In your house, AC power is grounded. Forget about that. DC power simply has two leads, one positive (power) and one negative (ground). Both are required for any DC device to do work. Your switch's job is to send positive and negative through those two wires, reversable.
And ditto what the other guy said. Do not plug this your antenna into a wall outlet. (kaboom!)

ac power in your house is grounded to work correctly, true, but there's still two wires that go to an outlet, and both have to be hooked up for the circuit to be complete and so it will work. Just like the dc circuit you're describing.

my question for OP is, what are you going to have that antenna doing in your coop? I wouldn't think it would be strong enough to raise a pop door, very curious

 

[Big Bubba]

ac power in your house is grounded to work correctly, true, but there's still two wires that go to an outlet, and both have to be hooked up for the circuit to be complete and so it will work. Just like the dc circuit you're describing.

my question for OP is, what are you going to have that antenna doing in your coop? I wouldn't think it would be strong enough to raise a pop door, very curious

I didn't have time to finish the project today. Tomorrow I'm headed to the hardware store to, hopefully, finish. I'm going to hook the antenna to a rope that will attach to a pulley and a door. I don't think the weight would be over 5 pounds and with some general confidence I would imagine it won't be problematic. We'll see. I will post results tomorrow.