perthdownunder
New Member
Hi all,
I am no good at electronics design, but I think I can follow a schematic and build a circuit and I'm even more confident that I can assemble a kit so I was hoping that someone could help me out with the design side of things.
I am building a chicken coop in our backyard partly for the eggs, partly for my kids and partly as another project to keep me busy.
What I am not really interested in is getting up at dawn to let the chickens out, especially as I'm a night owl and am often up to the small hours of the morning. I don't really mind shutting them in at night but figured if I could get a reversible door control it could shut itself at dusk and save me that trouble too.
I have found an existing controler that is available in England but buying and shipping it to Australia is going to cost over $200 and I don't think I can convince my wife to let me buy it.
What I would like to do is build a controler to control a DC motor which will raise and lower a vertical sliding door. Ideally, the door control will use a LDR to detect dawn and raise the door. The same LDR will detect when it is dusk and lower the door.
Bonuses to the design would allow a delay between 1-60 minutes between triggering the LDR and actually opening or closing the door as well as a mechanism that would operate like a garage door that would lift the door back up if it encounters an obsticle (like a chicken in the door), wait for a minute or two and then try to lower again. I'm not too worried about the last point though as I'll make sure that the door is light enough and moves slow enough that it won't hurt the chickens.
I was trying to see if there was some way to combine a couple of existing designs to get what I wanted. I was looking at LDR switch designs, timers and some of the reversible DC motor control designs. Some of the links in some of these forums have led me to kits which would maybe make it easier for me to assemble the final result if I can figure out how to combine them. Some of these are: https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2005/08/k79a.pdf, https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2005/08/k85.pdf and https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2005/08/k166-1.pdf
Can anyone help me out with this?
Thanks,
Graham
I am no good at electronics design, but I think I can follow a schematic and build a circuit and I'm even more confident that I can assemble a kit so I was hoping that someone could help me out with the design side of things.
I am building a chicken coop in our backyard partly for the eggs, partly for my kids and partly as another project to keep me busy.
What I am not really interested in is getting up at dawn to let the chickens out, especially as I'm a night owl and am often up to the small hours of the morning. I don't really mind shutting them in at night but figured if I could get a reversible door control it could shut itself at dusk and save me that trouble too.
I have found an existing controler that is available in England but buying and shipping it to Australia is going to cost over $200 and I don't think I can convince my wife to let me buy it.
What I would like to do is build a controler to control a DC motor which will raise and lower a vertical sliding door. Ideally, the door control will use a LDR to detect dawn and raise the door. The same LDR will detect when it is dusk and lower the door.
Bonuses to the design would allow a delay between 1-60 minutes between triggering the LDR and actually opening or closing the door as well as a mechanism that would operate like a garage door that would lift the door back up if it encounters an obsticle (like a chicken in the door), wait for a minute or two and then try to lower again. I'm not too worried about the last point though as I'll make sure that the door is light enough and moves slow enough that it won't hurt the chickens.
I was trying to see if there was some way to combine a couple of existing designs to get what I wanted. I was looking at LDR switch designs, timers and some of the reversible DC motor control designs. Some of the links in some of these forums have led me to kits which would maybe make it easier for me to assemble the final result if I can figure out how to combine them. Some of these are: https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2005/08/k79a.pdf, https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2005/08/k85.pdf and https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2005/08/k166-1.pdf
Can anyone help me out with this?
Thanks,
Graham