Hi All, I'm looking for ideas on how to improve my chicken coop door. Its a pretty basic affair - I'm using a DC motor with a DPDT relay for switching the polarity and magnetic reed switches as the stops in conjunction with reversing diodes and it works almost all of the time. Here's a short video that I made of it in action:
I've never had a failure in raising the door, but every once in a while it will fail to stop while lowering the door causing the motor to run until its completely wound out the spool and then it starts to wind up the backside raising the door until it binds the motor. I've revised the design a few times since the video to make the operation of the door smoother- partially enclosing it and improving the rails - and that has seemed to limit failures due to the door sticking, but last night I encountered a new problem. The fowl had fouled up the works - specifically there was a giant chicken poop preventing the door from closing completely. Does anyone have any ideas how I can wire up some sort of failsafe? In this case I'm thinking of cutting the bottom of the door to prevent this specific problem, but I'm sure that my contraption will be hobbled again by something I haven't anticipated and the problem is once the door winds up the back side there isn't anything I can do remotely since the reed switches are wired backwards in that case.
I was thinking that maybe another 'bottom' reed switch wired in parallel in a second position might work, but I'm not sure. Looking for ideas from some people smarter than me.
Thanks for reading!
I've never had a failure in raising the door, but every once in a while it will fail to stop while lowering the door causing the motor to run until its completely wound out the spool and then it starts to wind up the backside raising the door until it binds the motor. I've revised the design a few times since the video to make the operation of the door smoother- partially enclosing it and improving the rails - and that has seemed to limit failures due to the door sticking, but last night I encountered a new problem. The fowl had fouled up the works - specifically there was a giant chicken poop preventing the door from closing completely. Does anyone have any ideas how I can wire up some sort of failsafe? In this case I'm thinking of cutting the bottom of the door to prevent this specific problem, but I'm sure that my contraption will be hobbled again by something I haven't anticipated and the problem is once the door winds up the back side there isn't anything I can do remotely since the reed switches are wired backwards in that case.
I was thinking that maybe another 'bottom' reed switch wired in parallel in a second position might work, but I'm not sure. Looking for ideas from some people smarter than me.
Thanks for reading!