My Auto door solar setup for multiple coops

[bobbieschicks]

Specs for solar panel and charge controller.

 

[cavemanrich]

Your components look good. It looks like ALL is connected correctly.

What was the status of the 3 LED's in the battery indicator rectangle?
One possible solution if your current setup does not function to your desire due to low battery.......... Charge the battery in your home/shop with a battery charger. This way you start with a FULL BATTERY. and the solar will keep trickling a small charge continuously. Lets say it holds for 3 week intervals,, between induced charges, that may be easy solution. A very important note on external charger. An automotive car charger is TOO MUCH HORSEPOWER for the job.
lau I only use horsepower in a joking way. Its TOO MUCH AMPERAGE ). One such charger that would not overcharge your battery is a float charger. It is slow and trickles electricity at a low AMP rate.
https://www.harborfreight.com/automatic-battery-float-charger-42292.html
It has a maximum output of 400 milliamp. It should charge without overdoing. I used these in the past to keep my motorcycle batteries alive over winter storage. Otherwise, next spring I was buying new batteries each year.

 

[bobbieschicks]

Last night all three battery leds were red. This morning the doors opened fine at 6am and when I checked on things at 6:15am I noticed that only two leds were red.

I do have a battery charger. I used it to charge the battery overnight before hooking everything up.

 

[jballone]

I noticed the cmp-12 charge controller "charge" light was flickering all day. I noticed when I changed the timer tonight it was not lit.

A flickering charge light means that it is in float charge mode and the battery is fully charged. Battery meter should have all 3 red LED's lit.

Also, it's been my experience that the "charge" light stays on all the time, even at night.

 

[jballone]

View attachment 1184345
Last night all three battery leds were red. This morning the doors opened fine at 6am and when I checked on things at 6:15am I noticed that only two leds were red.

This is typical. The 3rd LED slowly fades away until the next time it gets fully peak charged.

 

[bobbieschicks]

Okay thanks. It has worked fine for both coop doors. Tomorrow I plan to work on the third door once the kids leave for school.

It's been overcast pretty much since I put it out there. This morning the battery showed two leds lit, but last night there were three. The charge light has gone off a few times for me.

 

[jballone]

I was surprised to find that the solar panel was keeping my batt charged on overcast days. My coop is also NOT in an optimal spot and only gets full sun for about 2 hours and the rest of the day it's in the shadow of my garage.

 

[bobbieschicks]

Thank you for your help.

I think the little solar setup I have will power all three automatic door openers for daily opening and closing. I'm hoping to have it operational tomorrow. It finally got warm enough outside to mess with repairing the third door and I managed to convince my DH to work on it for me.

I will go live with the third coop in the afternoon and get it in sync with the others. If it drains the battery too much I'll consider getting another 12volt battery that has more amps to replace the old 7ah.

 

[bobbieschicks]

Okay. All three doors are attached to the solar circuit and I tested the close and open sequence. After they opened again I noticed the 3rd battery light went off. But shortly afterwards I noticed it was red again.

Tonight and tomorrow morning will be the true test since it's been overcast all day with only a couple of sunshine hours.

 

[aart]

Okay. All three doors are attached to the solar circuit and I tested the close and open sequence. After they opened again I noticed the 3rd battery light went off. But shortly afterwards I noticed it was red again.

Tonight and tomorrow morning will be the true test since it's been overcast all day with only a couple of sunshine hours.

I'm pretty stupid about electrical stuff.....what component are you using as a timer?