Pullet-Shut Door in Existing Coop

[jykmoy]

Kjf18 and Ryan820 -- thanks for the discussion on the Pullet Shut Door. Do you have photos showing how you've set up the light sensor, battery and connections? This sounds great.

Am in the Seattle area where it is cloudy 6-7 months of the year...its moderate in the summer, but there is never a sunny guarantee! Tell about your experience with the Line Power version. What happens when the battery is low? How does the Trickle charger recharge the battery? Do you have to take the unit indoors and hook it up to a separate power source to recharge the Trickle which, in turn, re-charges the battery? What will the light sensor do? I hope my questions are clear. My coop sits far away from the house and there is no other source of power there.

 

[WaldensRidge]

Let's see some pictures!

So with the solar option do you have to have direct sun or is filtered sun ok?

How long does the battery last? Is there a battery life indicator?

I looked on their website and didnt find a package deal per'say. How much did it set up back?

 

[ryan820]

I have no photos yet as I haven't received it. However, the trickle charge, whether a line from the house or from the solar panel is just that...a low and slow recharge of the battery. Trickle charging, in general, prolongs the life of batteries. The very iPhone I use to type this response is a quick charge until about 90% and then it trickle charges as that allows the battery to efficiently store energy.

I am in Colorado, roughly a mile closer to the sun than Seattle but I'm willing to bet that even in a cloudy place like the northwest, it'll generate enough power to operate the door. I highly suggest emailing the gentlemen who own this business. They are kind and friendly and quick to reply and I bet they have clients in all sorts of situations, from cloudy to sunny from hot to cold. I bet they can pass along the experiences others have had and they make the doors themselves so they could probably tell you what's up with just about everything to do with their product. I'll email them this thread so maybe they can answer you directly. I'll report back here tomorrow when I get my door and post photos etc.

 

[Kjf18]

Here is a photo of our coop showing the door:



And here is a closeup of the door and attached motor:



Sorry for the poor quality, but it was getting kind of dark when I saw your question.

The light sensor is quite small. Here is a photo of the front of our coop. I placed an arrow to show where the sensor is:



Here is a closeup of the sensor:



The battery is a small sealed lead-acid battery. It is about 4x4x6 inches. Here are a couple of photos:



The black adapter is the trickle charger. The black cord runs to the battery. The other (white) adapter is for a wifi video camera.



The trickle charger continuously slow-charges the battery. It is similar to the trickle charger I use in the winter on my motorcycle. The battery appears to stay fully charged. I haven't tried unplugging it to see how long the battery lasts. Hope this helps. If you have any other questions, please let me know.

KJF

 

[Wyogirl]

Does anyone use the solar powered version??
Ayda

 

[Aeropennchick]

I am planning on getting this also. I posted on the thread that the makers of the door had, and this is what the guy told me about the battery (as we don't have electricity to our coop, and I don't want to fool with the solar panel):


Aeropenchick,

A nice feature with our unit is battery life. The current unit will run for at least a couple of months on a single charge. So if the sun didn't rise for two months (arctic circle?), the solar panel will not charge and the door will be just fine. In fact the battery life is a dependent on your climate, the colder it is the more frequent it would need charging. The two month life is for the dead of winter and you open & close it multiple times manually per day. It will last significantly longer in warmer weather & simple automatic opening/closing. In fact the battery manufacturers recommend to recharge these batteries every 3 months even if they are just sitting on a shelf.

And to give you even more security, every time the door closes, a light flashes for two seconds to tell you the battery status. So if it is flashing green, the battery is fully charged and charging. If it is solid green, the battery is charger (over 60%). A solid red is when you only have a month of run time and the battery is under 60% charged. A flashing red means that the battery is under 10% charged (nearly dead). So if you are worried that you've had bad weather and the battery is getting low, simply go out to the door and close it with the magnet. It'll show you how charged is the battery. Then use the magnet again & open the door, and everything will continue as normal. This battery status is a feature we recently added, and actually haven't even updated the website with this handy feature... one more thing to do!

Actually that reminds me of another very nice feature of our door. Once the door knows when to open and close, then you can use the magnet to open or close it any time you want without messing up its clock. It knows if the door is open or closed, and will return to its program after the next scheduled change. Let me give you an example. Let's say your door opens at 7am & closes at 8pm. One day a storm is blowing in, and you get the girls into the coop a little early at 7:30pm and close the door with the magnet. Well, come 8pm, the door knows that it's closed and doesn't try to close. It doesn't do anything until the next morning at 7am when it will open again.

Tony

Edited by TexasTony - 4/28/12 at 10:29am

 

[ryan820]

Got this yesterday and installed today. Closed at sundown per the light sensor!

 

[ryan820]

Reporting more on the door. It successfully opened this morning. Both this morning and last night the door opened and closed with no prompting and with no one around so this is a great sign. I have to admit, I'm quite impressed! We have had strong winds in the past 24 hours and it hasn't had any issues. I have to still secure all the wires as I'm afraid they could shift and get in the doors way. Don't want that to happen but I ran out of time yesterday and again today!

For those wondering, I got the door primarily because we travel a lot and we don't want to deal with a flock sitter. We have neighbors with two small boys who are excited to collect the eggs but that's all we ask of them. They get to keep the eggs too. I have the door, food and water all automated now. Ok not so much the food as I do need to refill them but the PVC pipes I use are big and last roughly a week before needing refilled. The water is refilled daily by a line I took from the garden irrigation system. It's a three gallon bucket and I run a 3 gallon per hour nozzle on the line for, yup, an hour. My peeps drink nearly all three gallons in a day!!! Why do peeps drink so much water? Besides growing, is it the feather production?

So, day one is done and the door has worked great. Before winter I will build an awning so ice and snow doesn't accumulate on and around the door. The cool itself needs the underside enclosed anyway because the coop upstairs isn't big enough for everyone. The peeps sleep downstairs and the big girls sleep upstairs. It works for now. I'm thinking of putting plexiglass around the bottom part to keep it lit but well protected from the winds and bad weather.

 

[Kjf18]

Glad it works. We really like ours.

KJF

 

[jykmoy]

Did you just lay the solar panel on the roof here? How did you manage to "fix" it so wind and rain etc. don't blow it off the roof?