Keeping Poultry safe from foxes
 

Here in Australia we have a problem with foxes which were introduced in the first half of the 19th century for sport.

I keep poultry and have adapted a spare MTM Scientific Picaxe solar tracker board to raise and lower a door in my poultry house to keep foxes out at night.

The system only uses one sensor (west) as I removed the biasing resistor to the east sensor and replaced the sensor with a 330 ohm resistor in series with a 5 volt LED to indicate when the door is open. (If the door fails to close I can see the glow of the LED from my house after dark.)

I have bridged the east and west limit switch terminals and rely on timing to raise and lower the door. It took a few days to match the 'raise' and 'lower' timings to ensure the door returned to the exact same place.

The circuit drives a 12 volt car windscreen wiper motor with a roller on it and a steel cable over a pulley to raise the door. Here are a couple of photos.

http://s943.photobucket.com/albums/a...m/IMGP2448.jpg

http://s943.photobucket.com/albums/a...m/IMGP2451.jpg

and here is the software:

'This program controls a solar tracker relay H-Bridge using a Picaxe-08M, used in this case to open and close a poultry house door
'Output 0 and Output 1 are used to control the relays
'Input 4 (West) monitors the photocell
symbol west = w1 'west is a 10 bit ADC number reading
symbol sun = w3 'threshold for sun detect (Usually 93)
symbol dark = w4 'threshold for dark detect (Usually 1000)
symbol u = w2 'indicator of door up (1) or down (0)
'Initialize all the pins for their respective functions
output C.0 'used for relay control
low 0 'initialize low
output C.1 'used for relay control
low 1 'initialize low
output C.2 'LED control
low 2
input C.3 'slow/normal switch
input C.4 'west photocell
sun = 300 'threshold adc reading for sunlight
dark = 1000 'threshold adc reading for darkness
pause 1000 'pause for 1 second to stabilize power supply, etc.
u = 0 'set door as down
main: read b0,u 'check position of door
if u = 1 then night 'if door up wait for darkness
readadc10 C.4,west '10 bit adc read west photocell
if west > dark then close
if west < sun then open
goto main
open: 'Routine for raising door
low 0 'strictly a blow-through preventing command
high 1 'energize relay
pause 9000 ‘ON time is 9 seconds to raise door
low 1 'stop energizing relay
u = 1 'set door indicator to up
write b0,u 'and store it
high 2 'turn LED on
night:readadc10 C.4,west '10 bit adc read west photocell
if west > dark then close
pause 1000 'pause for 1 second
goto night 'repeat the sensor scan
close: 'Routine for lowering the door, double check signals first
pause 100 'slight delay and then double-check darkness
readadc10 C.4,west '10 bit adc read west photocell
if west < dark then night
'Double-checking completed, proceed with the parking mode
low 1 'strictly a blow-through preventing command
high 0 'energize relay to lower door
pause 7300 ‘7.3 seconds to lower door
low 0 'stop the parking action and wait for dawn
u = 0 'set door indicator to down
write b0,u 'and store it
low 2 'turn LED off
dawn: 'Start the wait for first light to start tracking again
readadc10 C.4,west '10 bit adc read west photocell
if west < sun then main
goto dawn 'continue looping while waiting for dawn

I like your automatic Poultry door , great idea using a old windshield wiper motor and very enginous using the solar tracker. Making it work with what you have on hand is always a task , good job !

I have been hashing over the idea of adding power to my driveway gate I also thought a cable system would work for me , using a double sided pulley to operate both gates at once with a speed controller switch.

Hi Ecomodded

Thanks for your post. Windscreen wiper motors are ideal for lots of jobs. I use them to drive the units of my 5Kw solar tracker. (http://ecorenovator.org/forum/solar-...r-tracker.html) They are plentiful and usually quite easy to mount.

Very cool project. I agree with ecomodded, good reuse of materials.

Another readily available source of 12 volt motive power is cordless drills. These days it is almost impossible to buy new batteries for same and probably cheaper to buy a new drill. Hence I have seven dead drills but each could be adapted to a project that required 12 volt motive power, a car battery being a suitable source of power. An added advantage is that the chuck can be used to attach to a shaft. As for mounting, I used two exhaust clamps:

http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/a.../DeadDrill.jpg

nice , add a remote switch for on off and its speed control and its ready for action.

You could remove the trigger , extend the wires and use remotely , somewhat.

Great project I love the repurposed materials.


Rebuild those drill battery packs.
http://youtu.be/PtOS5evrqrQ