Alarm clock chicken coop opener
Mark Stead from Melbourne
Australia has created a clever, low
budget, automatic chicken coop door opener that takes advantage of a cheap
alarm clock.
I estimate he's spent around
45 bucks, which is not bad compared to commercial units over twice that.
What makes this design cost
less is the fact that you still have to manually close the door at
night. His instructions are clear with a generous helping of images to
guide you.
I'm thinking this alarm clock
opener could be modified to also close at night by incorporating the Chris
and Keri limit switch method.
Edited to add:
After years of research, Mark eventually settled on this automatic chicken door.
You can see
a summary of the best
chicken door alternatives and why he chose this version here.
If you're planning on
automating your coop, don't forget to pick up one of our chicken waterers. They never spill or
fill with poop, and if done right, can only need filling every few days
or weeks!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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@mark: The mechanism does have a closing switch - but does not have a sensor to detect when the door is closed. So you have to manually close the door, and then return the switch to the auto position.
Ultimately though, the problem is that the clock is a 12 hour clock, and the "alarm" simply goes off twice a day. Perhaps it would be possible to trigger the door to close when the alarm activates the 2nd time, but the timing will usually be wrong. For example in late spring now, the chickens are waking around 5:30AM (daylight savings time), and go to bed around 7:30PM.
It would probably make sense to use a light sensor to close the door - or even just use a light sensor to do both.