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Post by lbendlin on May 19, 2019 14:08:59 GMT -8
The chickens are now six weeks old, and were frankly getting too big for the brooder box. So we had to relocate them to their chateaux before all the project bits and pieces were ready. At least I splurged on a BME680 because I want to measure the air quality in the coop. I'm not suggesting anything, just measuring, ok?!
The "autonomous" piece hit another snag because the first few nights were rather cold. I had to cave in and run a temporary mains power supply to the coop for the infrared lamps and the brooder heating thing. I can control these via WiFi smart plugs ( the fabulous HS110 - with energy monitoring and simple API), but it's still too much for the solar panels to provide power to. So for now the box sits on the shed (best place for sun coverage) while the coop is in the shade. (side note: Now that the chickens have high speed wifi in their coop the possibilities are endless. I hear they like classical music)
Speaking of solar panels - when I built the tetrahedron to support the panel tilt I was concerned about the limits that design puts on the range of motion. Now I am glad I did it this way. I am using a watertight but relatively weak servo to move the panels, and it is no match to the freak winds that we seem to be getting more frequently. Thankfully the Tetrahedron prevents any damage. And as luck has it when the panel flips it flips due west so it can catch the evening sun.
My approach to switch individual panels with the QPM board works really well. Depending on the strength of the solar input , the battery level, and the output voltage I can decide which panels to allow and which ones to cut off. No more overvoltages on the SunControl board! I think I could even get rid of the Zener protection - but i'll leave that in just in case.
I had a single lockup of the AM2315 after at least two months of flawless work. A quick power cycle on the i2c bus resolved that. Let's see how long it holds this time.
Speaking of i2c - I found a cute little pan/tilt board for the Pi camera that can be controlled via i2c (search for "waveshare 2-dof") and I plan to incorporate that into the design so the camera can look around a bit more (and maybe scan the sky for hawks...). I bought a cheap-ish fake security camera housing with clear dome that i'll modify with the camera and pan/tilt servos and somehow bolt to the box
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Post by lbendlin on Sept 20, 2019 9:51:15 GMT -8
With summer now over and the chickens having survived the last few months (including two very close encounters with the neighborhood hawk (who is VERY interested, and difficult to disperse) I thought I give an update.
While the "fully autonomous" part has not worked out completely (just too many power hungry features in play) the SunControl based setup has mostly held up. I lost my secondary SunControl board to a bloated battery, so for now the solar panel is in a fixed position. It was uncharacteristically sunny this summer so the main circuit had no issues keeping the two main batteries (10000mAh each) topped up. The unit has been running unattended for four months now (with a weekly full image backup (8GB over WiFi!) and subsequent reboot of the Pi). It does provide an external view of the backyard and coop in addition to the meteo data.
The chicken coop now has a WiFi LED light (the usual Flux LED - well supported in Python) and I use that to trick the chickens into an extended day. The light comes on at 5% brightness at 6am, then gradually increases in brightness to 100% and switches off when the sun is 2 degrees over the horizon (checking with PySolar). The same process is reversed in the evening, switching the light on before dusk and then gradually dimming it until 8pm.
The chicken nesting area now has its own camera to record the comings and goings. I was originally planning to use RFID tags but those are too close range to be of any use for this scenario. Then I thought about I2C weight strips for the nesting boxes but that's mechanically too unstable. The camera seems to be an easier and much more powerful solution. I can see who is where, and with a bit of squinting I can even gauge if there was any result from all the jumping in and out of the nesting boxes and turning around five times etc. I am experimenting with OpenCV to identify significant differences between frames (done) and maybe even do object recognition of ellipsoids (aka eggs) - that's tbd. Thank you to SwitchDoc and the MouseAir project for the inspiration!
The chickens don't seem to mind, they are laying eggs like crazy. Today was the second day in a row with six out of six production!
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Post by SDL on Sept 23, 2019 11:56:42 GMT -8
From our latest Kickstarter, MouseAir: How about Chickens? No. Never. We listen to the our great customer friend, Lutz. He states emphatically, "Chickens have no respect for technology. None." BP
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