Shanel Wu

They/them. PhD student: smart textiles, weaving, computational craft, hardware hacking.

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22 July 2020

Coop Automation V1 - Automated Run Door

by Shanel

r/arduino - Arduino/ESP32-powered automated chicken coop door

Arduino/ESP32-powered automated chicken coop door (V1)

The ESP connects to our home wi-fi, looks up sunrise/sunset times using sunrise-sunset.org’s API, keeps time w/ ntp.pool.org, and runs the motor to open/close the door. The door automatically opens at sunrise and closes at sunset. A user on the home network can also browse to the ESP’s IP address to connect to a web interface to view the system time, scheduled sunrise/sunset times, and manually open/close the door.

Hardware:

Version Notes

Honestly, given how buggy this first iteration was, it’s probably bad development to even call it a “version” but all of the pieces were there! The door was only programmed to open and close on fixed time intervals (10 seconds), which was a completely arbitrary length of time. I ran it once, then realized that in order to change the motor time interval, I would have to run out and reprogram the whole thing anyway. So total system overhaul after that test run to make adjustability a key feature, not just for my debugging/developing purposes, but also to adapt to physical changes in the environment or changing human schedules/habits.

[[projects/ChickenCoop/index|index]]