Automatic Chicken Coop Door

Automatic Chicken Coop Door

The setup of the project in Home Assistant and ESPHome is currently published in the Home Assistant Community. 

3D-Prints

In here I'll focus on the 3D-Printed parts.

The Montage Plate

The montage plate is designed, to keep all parts in place. Mainly, it keeps the L298N, the Buck-Converter and the PCB in place. The plate can be fixed with 4 screws. To mount all the parts on the plate, M2.5 metal inserts are used. 

• Infill: 20%

• Material: PLA

The Pulley

To redirect the rope, I have created a pulley. In my case it's not possible to pull straight upwards, therefore 2 of them are needed to redirect it properly.

• Infill: 20%

• Material: PLA

• 4 outside walls

The Motor Mount

Inside the wet-room junction box, the motor can be mounted with this plate.

• Infill: 100%

• Material: PLA

• 4 outside walls

The Winch

The winch is attachted to the shaft of the motor by friction. It could be possible, that it must be glued together, but in my case it was pretty tight. 

• Infill: 100%

• Material: PLA

• 4 outside walls

Update Hole:

A hole was added to the side. Now the rope can be passed through and secured with a knot. Also the material is now PETG, due to the PLA got deformed after it got stuck. 

• Infill: 100%

• Material: PETG

• 6 outside walls 

The Build

The Material

I got most of the material from Amazon, but Aliexpress is for sure also fine.

1. 12V Worm Gear Motor (selflocking)

2. Wemos D1 mini

3. L298N H-Bridge

4. Power Supply 12V 2A

5. 12V to 5V Buck Converter

6. 2x Hall Sensor A3144

As I tried to stay in a low budget area, the material was about 30-40€.

Additional parts

• jumper cables

• at least 1mm² wires

• break out board

• some thin rope

• 8x M2.5 metal inserts

• 8x M2.5 screws

The Wiring

The pins are used as following:

• D1 - Motor down

• D2 - Motor up

• D5 - Limiting switch bottom

• D6 - Limiting switch top

The following pictures show the wiring diagram of my control unit.

The Configuration

ESPHome

The configuration file for ESPHome can be found here at Gists.

Following passwords must be adjusted:

api:
  encryption:
    key: "***********************************************"

  ap:
    ssid: "CoopDoor Fallback Hotspot"
    password: "***************"

For the initial setup, it’s important, to increase the timeouts as shown in the following example to a time, in which the door will close for sure. The time must be measured and with a few extra seconds entered into the global variables. In my case the time for opening and closing was different, therefore I created two different variables.

globals:
  - id: timeout_open_sec
    type: float
    restore_value: no
    initial_value: '57.0'
  - id: timeout_close_sec
    type: float
    restore_value: no
    initial_value: '45.0'

Home Assistant Automation

The automation currently takes the CoopDoor as a cover and opens it at sunrise and closes it at sunset. It’s possible to configure an offset, at sunrise and sunset, so the door doesn’t close immediately.
Furthermore, there are 2 timeouts, which must be set in ESPHome, to ensure, even when the limiting switches are not triggered, the motor will stop. This timeout is a trigger for a notification target to inform someone about it.

Installation of the Blueprint

Option 1: Direct Import (Recommended)

1. Click the the link to directly import it to you Home Assistant instance.

2. Click “Preview Blueprint” and then “Import Blueprint”.

3. Find the Blueprint in the Blueprint-Collection.

Option 2: Manual Installation

1. Copy the code from the .yaml file.

2. Go to your Home Assistant config folder: /config/blueprints/automation/floo33r/.

3. Create a file named CoopDoor.yaml and paste the code.

4. Go to Developer Tools → YAML → Reload Automations.

How to configure it

1. Select the CoopDoor cover entity

2. Select the timeout entity of the motor

3. Select the Targets to be notified (either use notify groups or multiple actions)

4. Select the desired offset for sunrise delay

5. Select the desired offset for sunset delay