Hello!
First post, and no idea what I'm supposed to write so thought I would just explain a bit of the theory behind why I'm doing what I'm doing.
I've always liked being as self sufficient as possible, and I've never been a fan of the massive factory farms that, unfortunately, currently need to exist to support our massive worldwide population. That being said, growing your own food is no easy task, and as any farmer will tell you, is very labour intensive. Not a good mix for our modern, busy world.
I've noticed a growing groundswell of movement, I'm not the only one who would like to be more hands on with my nutrition, but like myself, most people have a day job and have minimum amounts of extra time to devote to hobbies, desires and other such things.
Why can't we have both?
At the end of the day, we live in the future. There has never been a better time to integrate traditional, home grown food and modern, labour saving technology to have the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, many products are either expensive, hard to configure or incorrectly sized for the hobby farm world. It doesn't help that not many of these solutions are open source, preventing modifications by the end user to better fit their use cases.
With these thoughts in mind, I looked at my own "problems" and started working out potential solutions.
First up: Chickens.
A simple, easy to care for animal with a wide range of benefits. Chickens provide eggs, meat, entertainment and also help produce fertilizer for your garden, and keep bugs under control in their general area. The downside of chickens? Everything else likes to eat them as much as we do, and they aren't particularly bright.
My automated coop project solves many of the main issues involving looking after chickens. The door is controlled by daylight, just like chickens. When your chickens put themselves away at night, the door closes once it is dark enough and opens again with the mornings light, hopefully keeping your hens safe from any nocturnal predators. A water sensor monitors water temperature for the chickens and turns on a heater if the temperature drops below a set value that you can configure. Also, an air temperature sensor monitors the coops internal temperature and can control a ventilation fan to help keep things cool during the hot summer months. Lastly, a camera with a wifi connection lets you see whats going on inside your coop, and control/monitor the door if needed.
You can check this project out at Hackaday or Github for full details. It is entirely open source feel free to build your own "CoopCommand", but if you would rather just buy a mostly complete kit, I will have them available for sale on Tindie in the near future!
Git: https://github.com/hms-11/CoopCommand
Hackaday: https://hackaday.io/project/179275-coopcommand
Thanks for checking out my page!