Coop Door-o-matic 1.0 Howto

The ongoing saga of building an automated chicken coop door with materials at hand and a few other things.

What we have so far:

• Coop computer opens and closes door via HTTP requests.
• Coop computer provides local feed of webcam video.

What we'd like to do:

• Track sunrise and sunset time to open and close door.
• Email/text/twitter connectivity.
• Provide webcam feed to the world.
• Use webcam images to verify all chickens have made it in to roost in the evening.

Hard Ingredient List

• One HP ScanJet 4c in working order. It was a solid long-lived device, but was replaced by an all-in-one printer, so it was available.

  

• One Plat'Home OpenMicroServer opportunely won in the "Will Linux Work?" contest for the purpose of protecting chickens.

  

• One USB wireless device. Found Netgear MA111 on eBay. Listed as supported in Linux by wlan project.

  

• One or more USB infrared webcams. Found Kinamax WCM-NV13 6-LED Infrared Night-Vision 1.3 MP USB 2.0 Webcam with Audio Microphone on Amazon.com.

  

• 4 ABEC-7 skate bearings. Ridiculously inexpensive sometimes on eBay.

• Drywall J bead for bearing rails.

• Some electronics parts (more specifics later).

• Two magnets to trip limit switches.

• Some plywood to mount everything.

Soft Ingredient List

• A machinist or two to build parts.

• An electronics expert to connect electronic thingys together.

• A software wrangler to get the logic to work.

Rough Concept

The idea is to run the scanner door horizontally on the J bead rails using the scanner motor. The computer orchestrates.

Step 1: Kill the Scanner

The HP 4c has an enclosure inside that includes the power circuitry and the motor controller circuitry. We keep that box, the motor, the belt, the idler pulley, and the lid. Here we see the enclosure guts and the motor along with some leads the electronics expert added to study the motor controller IC.

Step 2: Connect the computer to the motor

This step is a bit fuzzy. Napkin note transcription and reverse engineering are in progress...

Step 3: Bring up the computer

The Plat'Home OMS computer by default runs a particular version of Linux called SSD Linux. The easiest way to write applications for the OMS is to cross compile in a VMWare image. More to come...

Step 4: Connect the limit switches to the computer

We're looking for part numbers on two magnetic (reed) switches.

You may want source code to run the motor. Stay tuned.

You may want source code to run the motor until the switches are tripped. Stay tuned.