Chicken Coop Door Opener Build, Chiro, Coding, Soldering, Learning, Practice, Sprawl - Wednesday
Yesterday morning after getting the boys to school I began the process of building the arduino setup that will open the chicken coop door in the morning and close it at night. This is a project that I first attempted many years ago and ended up tossing on the shelf. Now that we are minus a farm sitter I have to have a way to close the coop and this has been in the back of my head for a long time. What stopped me originally was the lack of good stepper motor and the RTC was fighting me. By the time I was headed to town I had the DHT11 temp/humidity sensor working right, the LCD displaying correct, and I was testing the light detecting resistor.
I had made a mistake when entering my chiro appointments to my calendar and just did recurring, so I got there and Jameson said "I don't have you down for today, I have you for tomorrow, but want to just do it now so you don't have to drive back tomorrow?" "Why yes, that sounds lovely." So I got squeezed into the mix and got a good half hour on the roller machine waiting for adjustment.
Once home again I got right back to work on the setup. After a bunch of searching I found I needed a much, MUCH bigger resistor on the LDR so made it 30K now which gives me the entire range of 0-1023 readings. 0 is the brightest and 1023 darkest.
Step by step I got the pieces tested and working together properly. The code came together fairly well and is semi clean and succinct. I ordered the correct stepper motor that will have a 5 pound holding torque so it will for sure pull the door open, and means I can weight the door to help it stay closed better.
I got R picked up from school, got home and dove back into the coding for an hour until I had to go pick J up after running club got over. Once back I was able to finally get the RTC working properly. I2C is slick with its addressing so I can chain devices. Then I got the motor driver setup which will connect to the motor and drive it either direction. I tried to get the LoRa to recognize the signal on a pin when the door is open but it isn't seeing it yet.
My code is simple and works so far but has no error control though I may not need it for the simple tasks this is doing. I've got space on the Mega that I may try adding in Taps and Reveille to play on open and close as a little pavlov-esque prod to the birds.
Leftovers for dinner made it easy for the evening and I was able to get R to practice on time. He got weighed in for the tournament this weekend and we deided we are NOT going to the huge tournament at the arena. It sounds HORRIBLE! All kids go thru round 1, then round 2, then... It takes HOURS between matches and people don't leave until sometimes after midnight and the doors open at 5:30am... They can take that mess and keep it, he is only 7 and not that competitive yet. Maybe in a couple years if he keeps the stoke for wrestling.
The sprawl is disgusting and everywhere. This few acre lot full of trees got wiped clean for likely another shitty development. I really like seeing them building the atrocious complexes IN THE CITY away from us. No clue what the plan is for it yet but I have a pretty good idea given all the continued sprawl.
I kept plugging away at my coding and got to the point where I need the motor to test, which I get today. I have to come up with a door and the hinge to mount it with then mounting of all the Adruino and parts on a board that will be inside the coop. The motor will mount outside but under the roof eaves. I still have to figure out a battery backup for the setup but I'm not that worried about it right now.
@stryeyz went to pick R up from practice and it was a bit late when we got in to soak as he went right to reading once home, and who wants to stop a kid from reading?
Pretty silly that I spent the entire first day of Spring in the house but I got something done that I have wanted to do for a decade. Seems I'm coming upon a number of languishing tasks from a decade ago... about the time J was born...
Today I get the stepper motor which likely won't be here until the afternoon, but it will get hooked up right away to see my programming work. Chances of rain today but nothing too bad it looks like. This morning I'll get the boys to school, I have to figure out how to disassemble lipo packs for the individual cells without blowing anything up, then I will plant spinach seeds on the north side of the greenhouse, the PDC premiere league is on midday, then I will figure out something for dinner tonight and the Kraken will likely lose against Vegas.
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What a great little project! I can't wait to see how it turns out. I've got an arduino tucked away somewhere.
My dad bought me one when I was younger. I had a few tricks up my sleeve, but it wasn't long before I had to buy new components to really make cool projects. And since my father didn't have much time to look after it, and I was too young to shop on the Internet, I gradually stopped looking after it.
Then later, I bought myself a Raspberry. All in all, it's the same thing.
That said, I'm sure I could still do cool things with my old Arduino if I could find it again.
I've got a handful of Uno boards and the Mega with a number of various shields so had most everything I need. It helps that there is a TON more example code available now and the libraries have been updated a lot to make using them easier. These old Arduinos are nowhere near as powerful as the LoRa but suffice for what I need with this project.
Yes, it's not the most powerful, but you can already do a ton of projects! So that's more than enough 👍
This is my first time hearing of Arduino set up. Seem like a good project though. I hope it turns out well
Nowadays technology is developing so we all must have information about such things.