hunternet93 – spot on. I was kicking around what to use for a motor, stepper, brushed, etc., and thought, “what if I can find a cheap cordless drill at Goodwill?”. Ask and ye shall receive. I found one for $5 shortly thereafter.

What happends if the raccoon lifts by the round piece in the center?

what happens for your poor little chicken don’t make it back threw the door before it closes????

@Craig

It looks like there’s clear plastic over that part, to keep the circle part from coming away from the door and keep anything from getting into it.

Also, I imagine that would be on the inside of the coop, where it’d be less wet?

Ya, sorry I didn’t show the outside. I still have to paint everything to get it somewhat damp-proof.

@spyder_21: If they don’t make it, they’re COOKED! Bwahahahaha! Seriously though, I’m looking at PWM’ming the motor a bit before closing to make the motor “sing” – in hopes of giving them a warning.

I have also considered an optical chicken detector that would disallow door operation if a bird is in the beam.

Fortunately for them, closing time is mostly a manual operation at this point, since we have to herd the birds. Opening the door at the crack of dawn (when I’m fast-asleep) was the real driving reason for this project.

Here’s a live Chicken Coop on Ustream…

http://www.fussychickens.com/

Did you include an h-bridge to handle both forward and reverse or is there one in the drill? Cheap drills that I’ve seen tend not to have them.

Is there a moat? I think there should be a moat. Any time there is a door like that, you definitely need to have a moat. And a drawbridge. A drawbridge, and a moat? Is that also part of your future plans?

xD

You should re-title this video, “Simple Solutions – Made Complicated.” I was able to apply the same function with a yard-sale salvaged garage door opener. The difference was that everything was self-contained (motor, circuit board which included limit controls and signal receiver.

I’d love to see it painted up in battleship grey, with fake rivets and some black and yellow hazard strip around the entrance. Maybe some spinning yellow warning lights too.

A chicken in a cargo-lifter power-suit coming through it’s probably too much to hope for though.

Hey @PunxyPhil “Good for farmers who really don’t care about microcontrollers and expandibility”
HEH, You should spend some time on a farm, loads of microcontrollers there from the pump on the well that feeds the pivots to the controllers on the tractors. Almost everything on the farm these days is digital and full of microcontrollers, not just hydraulics and sweat like them olden days. Maybe you haxxors have a frontier not yet discovered for yur haxxing. Try farming automation, relieve some tired farmers. Farmers are the original hackers.

@slink: when you do roll out to ‘production’ please include the “barnyard pimp cam” (rooster’s wireless helmet cam) live stream. thank you

@flapjackboy: I meant physically stack, with only a couple of signal connections between the boards. Originally, I wanted to have the BlackWidow board do both motor control and wi-fi webserving, but realized I’d have to integrate the state-machines for each (maybe someday). Instead, I punted and went with the seeeduino *and* the BlackWidow to keep ‘em separate.