Smart coop Ready-made home automation project

In this review, I will talk about my own example of creating a smart coop based on the project Chick (Chicken House), which uses a controller Wemos D1 mini with a chip ESP8266.

Frankly speaking, I would never have thought that twelve laying hens could easily provide for a family of three people, plus there will be a surplus and a third of eggs will need to be sold or distributed.

But of course, there is a nuance. It is that the stable egg production of hens depends not only on nutrition, but also on the climate that you will create in the hen house. Temperature, humidity, daylight hours can really increase egg production more than twice!

This is a general list of indicators and devices that are provided in the project. Not all of them are used in my project, so I will list what is involved:

  • A temperature sensor for the controller along with a cooler to cool it. This is a standard set for any project.
  • Temperature and humidity. These are some of the main indicators for the coop. A remote wired sensor will be used for them.
  • Climate will be formed at the expense of two other devices, first of all it is a heater. I will have two of them 250 watts each.
  • It is also extremely necessary to ventilate and remove excessive humidity, so air ventilation is important here. And since I have a small coop, a large computer cooler will do the job perfectly.
  • Illumination is an important indicator to turn on the device Light when necessary.
  • I will also use an auto feeder so that the hens eat regularly and yet do not overeat.
  • And of course every smart coop should have an automatic door or window for the birds to walk out, plus to conserve precious heat in the winter. This will be accomplished by using a window position indicator and a "Window" device.

That's it for now and the next step I will need to design the coop. This is my first smart coop, so a small size of meter twenty five by two and a half meters was chosen.

The general idea is to make the coop small and standing on supports. In this case, I see a number of advantages. First, it will be convenient to maintain. Secondly, there will be no excessive volume, respectively the cost of materials and heating. Third, its walls will be less susceptible to rot. And fourth, the coop simultaneously serves as a shelter, under which you can hide in hot weather.

Ideally, of course, the supports should be made of concrete or metal, but I chose a test version of the hundredth bar, let's see how much they will last. On the six supports are three legs, and on top of the floor board. Next comes a frame made of OSB board and fiftieth lath.

At the front of the coop is the main door for its maintenance. Above this door is a window for light and ventilation. At the back will be a small window for paddock. At the top there is an insulated roof also on a frame basis.

In general, only the frame itself is shown here. It is assumed that it will be insulated, for example, with polystyrene foam, and on top of it will be siding. For example, it can be wagon.

Inside there will be a perch and three nests. These nests are a separate structure that will be portable and removable.

Inside it there will be a sloping board on which the eggs will be rolled into a separate section with a lid. In this case the eggs will be easy to collect and the hens will not nibble them.

The finished drawings will look as follows. The dimensions of the elements are chosen so as to minimize the waste of lumber. I started from the standard size of OSB sheet.

First of all, the coop itself.

And these are the perches.

Well, after ordering and preparing the lumber, I started assembling.

First I prepare the supports, for this purpose I decided to soak them thoroughly with used oil.

The supports are placed on a gravel pad, and the lags are attached on top of them. And already on the lags begins to form the basis of the floor of the henhouse. I had a thirty-fifth tongue-and-groove board left for this purpose.

The base is ready.

Using metal corners, I proceed to the assembly of the frame.

Before assembling the insulation and the roof, I decided to perform painting to protect the wood.

The coop is also necessarily painted on the inside to close the pores and reduce formaldehyde vaporization from the particle board. For the floor, there is a special approach. First a protective impregnation and tinting and then two coats of yacht varnish.

I am assembling the roof frame and insulating it. Using two boards I made a profile for the wave of the ondulin roof.

As soon as the roof appeared, immediately the chickens started to breed in it.

The frame is ready. And you can proceed to its insulation. For this I will use extruded polystyrene foam with a thickness similar to the lath.

I install perches inside.

After laying the insulation, I well foam the cracks. To fence the territory of the hen house I use prapastmashennoy metal mesh. What can proceed to siding, cladding the coop with wagon.

When everything is ready, the final painting. It remains to make nests and try to place them. Further use showed that it will be convenient to place them on furniture wheels.

Also, in order to reduce chicken parasites, I treated the coop inside with a solution of lime. In general, in fact, the most effective way to combat them is to prevent them, and for this purpose, you will need climate control to eliminate high humidity.

The chicken coop is ready and has already sheltered the settlers. However, now it is time to make it comfortable and efficient.

To do this, I brought electricity to it and installed a powerful 12 volt power supply in the junction box. I need it because it will operate not only the controller itself, which is on the side, but also many other devices: lighting, ventilation, door drives and feeders.

This is what the controller itself looks like. In this coop it will be one. After all, the coop is small. But let me remind you that I don't necessarily need to pull wires from all the devices to this controller. If this were a large coop, it would probably be better to have a different executive controller near each device.

To the right of the main controller board are the other device relay module boards. These will turn on the heaters, hood, and feeder.

In the bottom right corner is a module for the arduino known as the motor driver. It is designed to run two devices. I will use it for the actuator drive motor because I need to reverse polarity and open-close the window. And instead of the second motor I will use it for the lighting, in order to change its brightness using a PWM signal.

There will also be a light sensor inside the controller box.

Now let's look at the other components.

This is the humidity and temperature sensor.

This is the LED light fixture.

Two infrared heaters. And a computer cooler as an exhaust.

At the back of the coop will be an actuator that will open and close the window or door for the paddock.

In order for the actuator not to fail, it is absolutely necessary to place two limit switches. They will turn the actuator motor off and on at the extremes without a command from the controller.

The next issue in the coop will be the drinker and feed. The drinker of the coop has been realized in the simplest way so far. It is a tank and special nipple drinkers.

But the feeder will be automated, because here we need to strike a balance so that there is no overeating on the one hand, and on the other hand so that feeding does not take up time.

To make an auto feeder I welded a metal frame on which will be installed a container for water.

It will be placed upside down. On top I made a hole for pouring feed, and the bottom of this bottle, to its throat will be attached to the screw dispenser. There is a separate video on how to make it.

Depending on the season, this dispenser can feed both inside the coop and outside. I used a standard fifty pipe to direct the feed downward.

Well all the components are in place and it's time for me to move on to the project settings and show you what automatic modes of operation I'm using.

I also highly recommend that you check out the tutorial video step number 6, which explains what the automatic modes are and details how they are set up. That way it will be much easier for you to understand what I'm going to talk about next.

This is what the overall list of modes looks like. The first three are not standalone modes. They were created to be used as templates in other modes. To make them easier to distinguish, I have capitalized their names.

I will start with the standard "System" mode.

Here tasks are defined only for the "Controller Cooling" device.

And automatic notifications are defined here, which will work in most other modes.

The next mode is "Illumination". From the name it is clear that here are tasks for the luminaire. The main task, is to ensure a long day of light.

The first task "Light" is needed to turn on the luminaire under the condition of low light on the street, and immediately at full power. The schedule for this task is from three to six.

The next task is "Sunset". Its meaning is not to scare the bird by abrupt switching off and to give it a chance to settle down for the night, gradually reducing the illumination during one hour.

And the last task "Dark" speaks for itself, it will just turn off the lights anyway.

The next mode-template is "Power". This is where the operation of the auto feeder will be determined.

I have made six tasks to turn on the feeder drive. Each task has its own time interval and time for which the feeder will be switched on. Time in this case means the interval during which the server will try to turn on the feeder. As a rule, if the connection is stable, it happens immediately at the first minute. If for some reason the command does not pass within the given interval, the corresponding feeder is skipped.

The first two operating modes "Open" and "Close" contain only the opening and closing tasks for the door. They do not affect the operation of other devices and are useful for cleaning the hen house.

But the next four modes are already the main working modes. I will tell their meaning in general.

The "Cold/Day" mode works when it is warm enough outside to open the door to walk the bird. In addition, it is also wise to reduce the heating of the coop while no one is there.

The "Cold/Night" mode works when it is dark, the bird has entered the coop, and the door needs to be closed. In this case, it is necessary to form a warmer climate so that the laying hens spend the night comfortably.

The "Frost/Day" mode will have to work on special days when walking the bird is undesirable.

And the "Hot" mode will work only when the temperature outside is extremely high and it is necessary to provide good ventilation.

Now let's analyze the tasks of each mode.

Cold/Day mode.

Ventilation. One task with working conditions on temperature and humidity. That is, as soon as the humidity or temperature is exceeded, the extractor will turn on until the minimum values are reached or the time interval ends.

Heating. Since the bird is on a walkway, we will keep the temperature at a minimum.

Door. Set to fully open.

Next mode "Cold/Night".

Ventilation. There are already two tasks here. "Control" - a very similar task as in the previous mode, but only with slightly changed conditions. And another task for ventilation - "Minimum". Without any conditions, turn on ventilation every half an hour just to refresh the air.

Heating. Already a higher temperature for a comfortable night.

Door. There will be two tasks here. The first is to cover the door slowly so as not to damage the bird. There's a very small range in light here. So, the decision to close the door will happen instantly. But, note that there can be no more than a three percent change in the position of the door at a time, that is, in one minute. Thus, the door will be closed little by little for about thirty minutes.

The schedule for the first task is evening, that is, it is a slow closing algorithm.

Recall that in Cold/Day mode, the door opens instantly to maximum as soon as that mode is set.

The second task, is a single digit closure. It is necessary for the reason that if the controller is suddenly rebooted at night, the door will close immediately and quickly.

The next mode is "Frost/Day",
which means it's very cold.

Ventilation. One task for ventilation and only in very extreme conditions of high humidity. It will be removed by heating the coop.

Heating. Present, but not as powerful as it was at night. During the day the bird moves, so it should be fresh.

Lighting. Simple to turn on. My coop receives little light through the window during the winter.

Door. Just close it. Not open it, keep it closed.

Next mode is hot.

Ventilation. Two settings. At night the extractor is switched on continuously, and during the day it is switched off completely.

The heating is naturally off.

The door is open at any time of day.

This is the end of the modes, but it is obvious that switching them manually will be a challenge. Naturally, home automation should perform its functions fully and the desired mode should be set automatically. For this purpose there is a smart grid.

The smart grid not only connects different projects to each other. It can also loop the automation of a project onto itself. In this case, that's what happened with the coop.

Here is the list of links of the hen house, when it will be automatically set modes.

With the first priority, the linkage is set for a frosty day. What is its logic?

Limitations. The first thing we have to do is to check if the Cold/Day mode has already been set before. Because in this case, the coop door will already be open and cannot be closed. Because then some of the birds will stay outside. This is an important point. Even if it was warm outside in the morning, but it got cold in the afternoon, the "Frost/Day" mode will not be established.

The second limitation is related to if you decide to set the "Open" mode. In this case, the automatic setting of other modes is blocked.

And now the conditions when exactly to set this mode.

First of all, it must be already light, and secondly, there must be a strong frost. And here we see that the last indicator will be taken from another weather station project.

The next link to set the cold day mode.

Here there are no restrictions, but there are conditions.

Similarly, first it must be light, and the second condition is the presence of heat. That is, the mode "Cold/Day" can change the mode "Frost/Day", but vice versa - no.

And the next mode with equal priority is "Cold/Night". It will be set when it has already started to get dark outside and it is cool enough. Here everything is obvious.

The last binding has minimal priority over the other bindings. It will set the "Hot" mode for any time of day, but with the obligatory condition of high temperature outside.

As you can see, home automation with SmartESP can solve quite complex tasks without programming skills. All these complex strategies are set with the help of modes and bindings.

This concludes my review of my smart coop. I never realized that keeping poultry year-round could be so simple. At the same time I received a cheap and most importantly environmentally friendly product. And in such quantities that by selling the surplus, I was able to fully recoup the cost of the electricity used in the winter.