<story><title>DIY ESP32 based chicken coop door. Control based on time, light or via app</title><url>https://github.com/ESP32-COOP/ESP32-COOP-DOC</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wiredfool</author><text>I did this in the Raspberry Pi 1 era.&lt;p&gt;* Pi for timing&amp;#x2F;wifi&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;webserver.&lt;p&gt;* Opened at 8am, closed at civil twilight. Or whenever I hit the button on the webserver, or the switch board.&lt;p&gt;* Limit switches.&lt;p&gt;* Mechanical swing lock for raccoon protection&lt;p&gt;* Electric drill + rope for the vertical sliding door&lt;p&gt;* Relay for direction, power mosfet for the drive controller.&lt;p&gt;* Intermediate board between the 3.3v controller and the 12V power board.&lt;p&gt;* Lead acid battery + charger for the power.&lt;p&gt;The door was pretty hefty, and was _solid_. 1&amp;#x2F;2 or 3&amp;#x2F;4 ply IIRC. The drill wound up being a mistake, because the power was too high, managed to fry some relays before I got everything worked out. The limit switches were generally pretty good, but they were also pretty well protected by the door design.&lt;p&gt;The best bug was that the wifi worked really well during the day, but not at night. Turns out that the LOS between the wifi dongle and the AP went through the roost, and chickens absorb enough wifi signal to drop it off the net. So one 3m usb cable later, and the dongle was on the other side of the roost. Solid networking from then on.&lt;p&gt;Sadly I left it in the coop when moving out.</text></comment>
<story><title>DIY ESP32 based chicken coop door. Control based on time, light or via app</title><url>https://github.com/ESP32-COOP/ESP32-COOP-DOC</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tengbretson</author><text>I have an automatic chicken coop door from the company Run-Chicken. It is one of the most brilliantly designed products I&amp;#x27;ve ever owned. It has an app for setting up the opening and closing rules, which can be rather sophisticated, based on both time and light conditions.&lt;p&gt;The device itself has &lt;i&gt;no WIFI, bluetooth, or a radio of any kind&lt;/i&gt;. To program the device, you push a button to put it into a programming mode, then hold your phone up to its photo sensor, and it will flash the screen in a sequence of black and white to relay the encoded settings.</text></comment>