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Chicken Coops

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DIY Eglu Chicken Coop Automatic door opener/closer. Have a 12v 15mA motor (4rpm), 12v 5AH lead-acid battery, and 4.5v/50mA solar panel. Building chicken door. I've already built a chicken door with a $100 drapery motor, but this seems overpriced to me, when there are so many available salvage 12 v motors from old car doors. The drapery motor is simple to use because rather than limit switches it simply uses an adjustable mechanical plastic slotted disc to manually toggle a double pole switch to operate the motor. With a timer on the line set to on/off twice a day, it's an easy build. But I want to make a standalone unit, (solar powered) using a 12v system. I have the battery, with what I think is sufficient juice, and the motor from an old Chrysler window opener. I'm hoping to keep the battery "topped off" with the solar panel. Since the unit will only get used twice a day I would think reserver power should be manageable.

10 Most Creative and Inovative Chicken Coop Designs | thepoultryguide.com. When thinking about verandah farming, a number of pointers need to be considered important. One of them is the chicken coop designs. Chicken coops are basically referred as the place where the chicken live and the egg laying, breeding and egg hatching processes take place. These places should be made comfortable and the optimum temperature needs to be maintained in the coops because the comfortable and well planned designs might help get best out of the chicken. In context of such pointers, we are here to tell our web users; the most creative free backyard chicken coop designs for the chicken. So let us discuss them one by one. 1. Handcrafted small chicken coop designs: The most common design is the handmade coop design. 2.

Another simple chicken coop design is the car shaped coop design. 3. Solar coops have many merits. 4. Catering to more than one need, this is one of the most creative designs. 5. The egg shaped design is also a smart, elegant, creative and trendy design. 6. 7. 8. 9. Automatic Chicken Coop Door, Chicken Coop Ideas, Plans. Automatic Chicken Coop Door Openers. 6 considerations for building chicken coop nesting boxes. One of the nature’s most prime and useful product can be availed from the use of the nesting boxes. When it comes to the process of raising backyard chicken, numerous dimensions and factors might demand your utmost attention. The eggs that are bought from the stores are quite different from the ones you obtain from the home based settings. The difference between two lies in the coloring mechanisms. The color of the yolk for the eggs grown in the home settings would be more in resemblance to the color of the setting sun at the end of clear cool day, while the yolk color for the eggs produced at the factory settings would be more pale yellowish like a smoggy sun in a hot afternoon.

The reason for which you should prefer to make use of the plans for chicken coop lies in the numerous benefits you would be able to avail later onwards. The Number The prime rule of thumb which can be used here lies in the number of hens you are looking to accommodate in a single nest. Chicken Nest Box Size Place. Servo motor moving on different levels of light.

Light Sensitive Chicken Coop Door. Hi, I recently started keeping my own chickens and have really enjoyed the whole experience. The chickens were all really friendly and provided hours of amusement. Until a few weeks ago I had 4 of our feather friends in a nice Coop. That was fine until one night, for the first time ever, we forgot to close the door to the coop. Unfortunatley the fantastic Mr Fox must have been casing the joint for some time and siezed his opportunity. Green Chicken Coops. Automatic Chicken Coop Door Opener Project. Automatic Chicken Coop. OUR COOPS | Laughing Chickens. Automatic, self-locking, chicken coop door. Automatic chicken coop door opener. Auto Coop Door Prototype : Nifty-Stuff.com. Rest In Peace Ming-Ming Duck After years of thinking about this, and after 2 separate raccoon attacks I finally found some time to create a prototype / proof of concept of my auto chicken coop door closer.

You can read the details of the initial design here: The most recent coon attack was 3 weeks ago when a gang of 4 coons came into the coop just an hour after sunset. They were able to kill a hen and our only duck before I got out there to scare them away. It is a terrible feeling knowing that if you had only gone out a few moments earlier that everybody would be fine. It only takes a single night of forgetting, or not getting home in time to lock up the coop and an entire flock could be destroyed. As stated in my original auto chicken coop door plans, I only needed a design that would close the door in case we forgot or couldn’t make it home in time. Here is the BETA Version 1.0 Open & Close Parts: Next Steps: Raising BackYard Chickens, Build a Chicken Coop, Pictures of Breeds.

Automatic pop hole opener This is not my own idea. We got the idea from a fellow BYCer. We now have two coops (imagine that) and our first automatic door opener was first installed in February of 09. It has been happily pulling open and pushing closed our fiberglass coop door since then without a problem. Material list: An outdoor timer (digital would be REAL nice but optional). Materials: New or used car antenna. The two 12v 5 amp power adapters. Make sure it is at LEAST 12v 5 amp to meet the power demand of the antenna. This is a convenience item' this can all be hard wired but it's kind of bulky to move around and work with. Your basic grounded outdoor timer. Our soldering kit and wire cutters Let's get started! 1. 2. 3. 4. After I soldered the wires I then took the black electrical tape and taped them up. 5. 6. 7. 8.

To make the antenna function you have to have a constant hot and an on and off. In this pic you can see my on and off adapter is marked in the green tape. 9. 10. 12. 13. 14. Powerful Gearmotor and Solar Panel Set-The Electronic Goldmine. THE DIYers photos. Chicken coop automatic door. Www.kei.co.nz/A000185B PicPatch Geting Started.pdf. DIY solar powered automatic chicken coop door opener. Christian Wolpert's automatic chicken coop door opener and closer is the second one I've seen so far that is completely off the grid and designed to work on a battery that gets charged with a solar panel.

It uses an MSP430 microcontroller as the brain along with a customized Linux source code that Christian is kindly offering as a free download. I know building and programming your own microcontroller can sound advanced, but Christian describes a clever short cut where he makes use of a tutorial as his starting point. This trick reduces most of the number crunching work to a process of adjusting specific interrupt routines to fit your automatic coop opening needs. Edited to add: After years of research, Mark eventually settled on this automatic chicken door. You can see a summary of the best chicken door alternatives and why he chose this version here. If you're planning on automating your coop, don't forget to pick up one of our chicken waterers.

Automatic chicken door version two. | Filear.com. As it is getting cold again and my chickens made it through the summer just fine, it is time to revisit and revitalize my automatic chicken door. The older model was a large door that slid on a track that would get leaves, snow, and ice messing the whole thing up. Also the mecanisim that opened the door was a string that tension was held on with springs, the string would knot up and stop working, blowing the fuse sometimes. There is an older version of this project and you can read about it here.

Chicken door version 1 With version two I made the door smaller and lowered it down so the older chickens could more easily get through. Having the door up off of the ground helps keep wondering critters out but this design works better. I also made the door smaller so that it was easy for my motor to pull it up. Chicken door version 2 Surprisingly the mechanical aspect of the door kicked my but the most. Electronics of the chicken door. Here is the code if for your copy and pasting pleasure. Chicken Coop Automatic Door | DIY Chicken Coop Plans. Call me crazy, but a chicken coop automatic door just might make your life easier. Early every morning, you (or someone in your family) will have the chore of going out to the coop and letting the birds out into their run or your yard. Of course, at the same time, you are probably taking out some fresh water and chicken feed to your birds, so an automatic door may not seem like much of a necessity.

However, at night, you will want to make sure your flock is safely tucked inside their coop as soon as the sun begins to set. Many of their predators are nocturnal and attack under the cover of dark. If you are delayed at the office or enjoying a night out on the town with your family and friends, you may not like what you come home to find. This is where automatic chicken coop doors come in handy... Your birds know when it's bedtime. We came across a couple of handy do it yourself plans that will do the job of closing up the coop when you are not around to do it. Photo credit: Michael Brannon. Automatic_chicken_coop_door [Renewable Energy Monitor] Automated chicken coop door.

Chicken Coop Door open/close. I keep forgetting to close the coop door so I automated the door with an Arduino, a linear actuator from Firgelli Automations, four solid state relays from Fotek (in hindsight this is super over designed), and a real time clock from Sparkfun (uses i2c). Below is the code. It takes into account the day of the year and adjusts sunrise and sunset. The door opens one hour after sunrise and closes one hour after sunset. /* * ChickenCoopDoor.pde * * Close door at sunset plus * Open door at sunrise plus * * Once a day just after midnight calculate sunrise and sunset times for the day * * Edwin A. Pell III 06/29/2010 * */ #include <Wire.h>#include <Math.h>#define RTC_ADDR 0x68 int current_day;int door_opened;int door_closed;int sunrise; // in minutes from midnightint sunset; // in minutes from midnight int close_a = 2;int close_b = 3;int open_a = 4;int open_b = 5; int second;int minutex;int hour;int dayOfWeek;int dayOfMonth;int month;int year; void setup(){// Serial.begin(9600); Ed.

IT LIVES!! Chicken Coop Automatic Door. Hi all, I'm looking into automating my chicken coop.I was going to use a basic timer and motor to open\close the door but this looks like a great opportunity to visit the Arduino platform To begin with I was hoping to start with the basic door opening\closing. What hardware should I get? I think I need: Arduino Uno - R3Light Sensor (LDR)A motor control board? The door is attached to a long vertical bolt that needs to be turned 180 degrees to open\close (It’s an Eglu Classic). With the timing, would it be better to use a clock with an offset to work out sunset\sunrise or rely on the LDR? I have some .net programming experience so C might be a learning curve - my main weakness is the electronics side. Chris and Keri’s Blog » Automatic Chicken Door. Introduction My wife and I started raising chickens this year. A few days after we moved them out to the coop, the novelty of going out in the morning to let them out and in the evening to lock them up began to wear off.

We needed an automatic door opener! Being an engineer, and a cheapskate, I decided to build one myself rather than shell out over $200 for a commercial one (of questionable quality). I can do questionable quality myself, thank you very much. The design I settled on was to use the motor from a cordless screwdriver and put a spool on it to wind up a thin rope that would lift the door. To control the door, I modified the electrical parts of the screwdriver to interface with two limit switches to control the up/down travel.

In addition, to increase the security of the door against being opened at night (by raccoons, etc) I fashioned an automatic mechanical latch that bolts on to the door. If you decide to use my design to build an opener please let me know! Materials. The Green Chicken Coop. Automated Chicken Coop Door. Analysis: The assumption here is that the sunrise/set timetable is one sinus wave, the rest is scaling and translating a bit sunrise = int (350 + ( 90*cos( ((((month-1)*30.5)+dayOfMonth)+8) /58.1) )); The part: (month-1)*30.5 + dayOfMonth + 8 This is a formula for dayoftheyear with a small offset 8 days. If you fill in the days and months of the year, you will get approx. 23 march = 90; 23 june = 180; 23 sept = 270 and 23 dec = 360 (=0) .

These are the solstice and equinoxes.Note the +8 is the offset between 1 jan and 23 dec (shortest day in NH = Northern Hemisphere) so now we can bring back the formula to: sunrise = 350 + 90*cos( dayofyear/58.1) ; As the cos() needs a value between 0..2PI the dayof year must be divided by a value so that 0 is mapped on 0 and 365 is mapped upon 2PI. simple math: 365/2PI = 58.0915542... which is rounded to 58.1. This is a very small error but one better uses 58.091554 (the approx limit of Arduino float) to keep error to a minimum as : sin(x) = -cos(x+90);

Automated chicken coop door is solar-powered. 10 Most Creative & Innovative Chicken Coop Designs. Add-A-Motor Chicken Coop Motor. A Solar-Powered Automatic Chicken Coop. Chicken Tractors. Cob Construction For A Chicken Coop:Making a small chicken coop from cob (mud and straw) can be fast and fun (it's something you can do over a few days with a group or your children doing just an hour or so a day. The videos below are a cat house but the principles of building with cob are the same. # A lot of Rocks at the bottom and make sure water will drain away from your structure. # Mix mud, a little water and straw and form the walls by hand. For a chicken pen the walls can be quite thin. # Have a wide overhanging roof to protect the walls. For extra protection you can lime wash the walls ocassionally although you probably won't bother. # With a chicken coop think through how you're going to collect the eggs and where the manure will go when the chickens are roosting (some people use bird wire under the roost so the manure falls out into a container, plastic wheelbarrow or hay etc.) # Have fun and make your chicken coop beautiful and unique.

Arduino and L293D controlled chicken coop door opener. 841578 coop plans [Converted].ai - ecmp2-0160674.pdf. Building A Chicken Coop? Read This First. Automatic Chicken Coop Door : Nifty-Stuff.com. Rest In Peace Grey Chicken I’ve been wanting to design an automatic chicken coop door closer for years. There are plenty of other systems out there that automatically open and close the coop door, but they are expensive and, well, not designed by me! Basically my idea is to create a simple system that is a “safety net” in case we don’t remember to lock our girls in at night. I have no problems letting the girls out in the morning, but I want to ensure they are closed up safe in the evening. Some have commented ”What if all the girls don’t get in the coop in time, or get caught in the guillotine door as it closes?”

I’m always worried that I’ll forget to lock up the girls, this auto close system at least give me some insurance just in case we forget. In my opinion, I’d rather risk loosing one hen that didn’t get into the coop in time instead of loosing all my girls because I forgot to lock them up. The Design: My first auto coop door design called for an electromagnet holding the door open. 10 inspiring urban chicken coop designs for Happy Hens. Chicken Coop Plans, Free Chicken Coop Plans.