Robot Chickens! How a Netduino runs our backyard chicken coop
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This document describes a project to automate the feeding and door operation for a backyard chicken coop using a Netduino microcontroller. The author details how the Netduino will monitor light levels using a photoresistor and automatically open the coop door and feed the chickens in the morning, and close the door at night. It lists the components needed including the Netduino, photoresistor, door actuator, feeder, and LED indicators. Potential future enhancements like adding solar power, logging to an SD card, and Ethernet connectivity are also mentioned.
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Robot Chickens! How a Netduino runs our backyard chicken coop
- 2. Robot Chickens! How a Netduino secures and feeds our backyard flock.
- 3. Robot Chickens! How a Netduino is going to secure and feed our backyard flock.
- 4. How to spend $200 and 80 hours to get out of doing a chore that takes 5 minutes a day.
- 5. How to hijack your wife’s Amazon prime account and make them think she’s a geek.
- 6. The Chickens (not robots) Dolly Brownie Izzy Vader
- 7. The Coop (not robotic)
- 8. Eat Scratch Poop Squawk Lay Eggs Sleep
- 9. Chickens are intuitive photosensors • Wake at dawn ready to go • Go in to roost at dark https://www.flickr.com/photos/infomastern/
- 14. The Plan Automate the door Automate the feeding
- 15. if (isLightOutside) { OpenCoopDoor(); FeedChickens(); } else if (!isLightOutside) CloseCoopDoor();
- 16. COMPONENTS
- 17. • .NET Micro Framework • $59.95 • VS2012 • Netduino SDK
- 22. DEV ENVIRONMENT
- 24. PHOTORESISTOR
- 25. DOOR
- 26. FEEDER
- 27. LED INDICATORS
- 28. FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS • Solar charger and battery power • Logging to Micro SD card • Ethernet connection for active monitoring and control
- 30. Derek Smith @smithderekm www.codeovereasy.com DSMITH-14 for free trial
Editor's Notes
- Thanks for coming out this morning. This session is called Robot Chickens: How a Netduino secures and feeds our backyard flock. Though, if truth be told, it should be called
- How a Netduino is going to secure and feed our backyard flock since this system is obviously here with me today and not installed yet in the backyard. So that got me thinking about other ways I could have titled this presentation. First I came up with
- How to spend $200 and 80 hours to get out of doing a chore that takes 5 minutes a day. Because that’s what we technology folks do, right – it’s all about solving a problem. Another option was http://www.flickr.com/photos/flashpro/
- How to hijack your wife’s Amazon prime account and make them think she’s a geek. But in fact we’re here to talk about our backyard chickens…
- Right now we only have 4 chickens because in a grand stroke of cosmic irony, we lost a chicken a couple weeks ago to a predator. But we have Dolly, Brownie, Izzy, and Vader. They live in our backyard in this
- Coop. I built this coop using free plans from the internet. You know you’re in deep with chickens when the “free” chickens that arrive at your house make you spend $300 in lumber to build a house for them.
- So for those of you who don’t have chickens living at your house, let me tell you a bit about these simple animals. Basically, they EAT, Scratch the ground, POOP, Squawk and make noise, Occasionally LAY EGGS, and eventually go to SLEEP. And they do this all day, every day. Now one interesting fact about chickens is that they are INTUITIVE PHOTOSENSORS -
- Chickens are intuitive photosensors They naturally rise at DAWN ready to go,
- And they will always head in to their coop to roost as the darkness sets in. They will always find a high spot to roost, and will huddle together most of the time. Another key fact about owning chickens is that they have lots of natural predators. In my backyard, we’ve chased off
- foxes
- Weasels, and
- Racoons. So with the need to lock them up every night to keep them safe, and open the coop up every morning so the birds can get out and eat, someone in the family has to remember to go out to the coop twice a day. And when the sun goes down earlier, as it is during this time of the year, if you want to go out to dinner, you essentially put the chickens at risk by not securing them, giving predators an opportunity to attack.
- So I had a basic plan: Automate the door, so it could open and close according to the amount of daylight, and also automate the feeder so that a new pile of food would be released each morning.
- The main logic behind the automation is quite basic:
- Let’s talk a bit about the components that went in to this system.
- First and foremost is the Netduino plus 2. I chose this model for its Ethernet connection, since I ultimately want to be able to monitor and also control this system from a web based mobile site.
- Next, to handle the raising and lowering of the coop door, we need a DC motor and a special motor controller called an H-bridge. The H-Bridge is what allows us to control what direction the motor turns.
- For the feed dispenser, we use a servo motor.
- We have some LEDs to indicate if the door is open or closed.
- Finally we need a photo-resistor that is our sensor for detecting the amount of daylight.