1) "Won't the chickens get stranded outside?" - they pretty dependably head back when it starts to get dark.
2) "Do you use any position sensing?" - nope. The door has mechanical limits on both sides and not enough torque to disassemble itself.
3) "Over time, won't it get obstructed by dirt?" - if you never clean, probably, but that's also true for most other designs. In sliding-door designs, you need to keep the rails and the rack-and-pinion mechanism reasonably clean. Here, it's the threshold and the rod-end bearing.
4) "Could a predator force it open?" - worm-gear motors can't really be turned by hand, so it should be perfectly adequate for foxes, coyotes, and the like. A bear could easily destroy the mechanism if they hit it the right way, but that's why we also have an electric fence.
5) "Can't a predator dig under the coop?" - when building the coop, I excavated a wide margin around it, added a 3 ft wide skirt of steel mesh, and backfilled the hole with boulders.
Hey! I run The Smart Coop (www.coop.farm) - your project is awesome! We make cameras that do predator detection, egg alerts, door open / closed alerts, etc. I have extra camera's if you want me to send you one. If so hit me up at aj[at]coop.farm and I'll ship you one, you'll get a kick out of the software.
Before I even read the article, I watched the video first. My first thought was: okay, this guy’s a computer genius, he gets math, electronics are no mystery to him, woodworking and a bunch of other skills on top of that...
But how on earth did he train the chicken to come out and peck the green button to close the door?!?!
Only later did I read that you covered the sensor to simulate dusk.
Another cool article. 15 years ago I had cats with a cat door that the raccoons used one time more than I would have liked (used > 0). Never got around to a dedicated raccoon excluder but I had my ideas
one soapbox for me to get up on, being you're an accomplished techie: a kg is a unit of mass, not force, torque should be in dyne*cm or N*m
The more I look at this article the more I love it. It's simple and functional. I'm curious how well that door handles all the crud that chickens leave on it. In my design I had the door slide up and down with door sliders. I used an actuator and hung it by a cable. This prevented the crushing chicken routine. But still I love your idea
Some followup Q&A:
1) "Won't the chickens get stranded outside?" - they pretty dependably head back when it starts to get dark.
2) "Do you use any position sensing?" - nope. The door has mechanical limits on both sides and not enough torque to disassemble itself.
3) "Over time, won't it get obstructed by dirt?" - if you never clean, probably, but that's also true for most other designs. In sliding-door designs, you need to keep the rails and the rack-and-pinion mechanism reasonably clean. Here, it's the threshold and the rod-end bearing.
4) "Could a predator force it open?" - worm-gear motors can't really be turned by hand, so it should be perfectly adequate for foxes, coyotes, and the like. A bear could easily destroy the mechanism if they hit it the right way, but that's why we also have an electric fence.
5) "Can't a predator dig under the coop?" - when building the coop, I excavated a wide margin around it, added a 3 ft wide skirt of steel mesh, and backfilled the hole with boulders.
Hey! I run The Smart Coop (www.coop.farm) - your project is awesome! We make cameras that do predator detection, egg alerts, door open / closed alerts, etc. I have extra camera's if you want me to send you one. If so hit me up at aj[at]coop.farm and I'll ship you one, you'll get a kick out of the software.
Before I even read the article, I watched the video first. My first thought was: okay, this guy’s a computer genius, he gets math, electronics are no mystery to him, woodworking and a bunch of other skills on top of that...
But how on earth did he train the chicken to come out and peck the green button to close the door?!?!
Only later did I read that you covered the sensor to simulate dusk.
Anyway, awesome project!
Another cool article. 15 years ago I had cats with a cat door that the raccoons used one time more than I would have liked (used > 0). Never got around to a dedicated raccoon excluder but I had my ideas
one soapbox for me to get up on, being you're an accomplished techie: a kg is a unit of mass, not force, torque should be in dyne*cm or N*m
/soapbox
The more I look at this article the more I love it. It's simple and functional. I'm curious how well that door handles all the crud that chickens leave on it. In my design I had the door slide up and down with door sliders. I used an actuator and hung it by a cable. This prevented the crushing chicken routine. But still I love your idea
This is really cool. I love it. I did a coop a few years ago where I used a pa10 actuator to address the problem.. Iif you follow my links it points back to how I figured out the time to open and close using sunset calculation https://www.vinthewrench.com/p/the-humble-actuator?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
A neat trick for end-stops is to use two additional diodes for bridging the opposite one. It makes it foolproof. https://www.bobek.cz/dc-motors-limit-switches-and-diodes/