The issue that prompted the re-design, was that the coop was in need of some maintenance, including a deep cleaning and fresh wood preservative, which in turn required that the coop was empty. Further, the existing electronics was showing its age, some things were not working as well as they should and maintainability was an issue due to the prototype nature of the boards. The moisture seals in the boxes were allowing moisture and mites to get into the warm electronics, so a plan was put in place to design and build new boards over the winter months and get the existing code base ported and working, with the aim of installation during the summer of 2023.
To do that, we need to know what we are going to build, so we need a design. Starting from the initial v1 functional spec and taking the things we've learned, its good to review what we need, what works, what doesn't work so well, what was not used, so that we can decide what to do with the new platform.
Functionality
Much of the existing functionality will be carried forwards, including :
- Help us keep te chickens safe and not hurt them in any way
- Be able to tell us when it has a problem, so we can resolve it
- Be weatherproof so it can work all through the year
- Be reliable in operation and failing safe if things go wrong.
- Automatically open and close the pop hole door at the correct times
- Require minimal human involvement, except for normal activities such as cleaning, filling food, water and collecting eggs etc.
- Reduce our running costs by using solar electricity to charge and operate the system during the summer months, or from a charger in the winter months, when solar produces no power.
- Indicate if the system is OK or has a problem, so that we can fix it
- Have an inside light that acts as a night light to aid roosting (the bars are up and chickens are not good with low light levels) and to illuminate the inside of the coop during cleaning to make things easier, removing the need to use a torch.
- Have a manual override the system to lock the chickens in or to let them out – locally from the hen house
- Be as fox proof as possible
- Not make the chicken house look ugly
- Allow operation from the house, allowing any locked-out chickens to be let in, or problems to be easily seen.
Future enhancements
Provide expandability so that we can integrate new modules and functionality without any re-design to what is already there, this will include :
- Webcam modules for the main coop and the conservatory under the coop
- Artifical Intelligence modules, allowing alerting of any rats or eggs in the conservatory area
- Level monitoring for consumables, including food and water feeders
Technology requiremements
A key limitation of the 9 year old solution was the obsolete technology components being used, therefore its a good time to refresh the systems
- Use up-to-date electronics
- Use custom printed circuit boards (PCB's) to improve reliability and improve maintainability
- Reduce the power budget, to keep running costs low and allow longer running time during power failures.
- Be upgradeable
- Use up-to-date development tools
- Be as secure as possible, not impacting the house or home network security
- Re-use the existing code base, at least in the short term
- Allow me to do development, debugging and fault fixing, locally on a dev instance in my office and remotely to the unit in the coop.
Functionality that was removed
The following functionality was removed, since it was not being used.
- ChickenCam, the webcam that shows what the chickens are up to. This wasn't being used as the light levels inside the coop were not compatible with the webcam that was being used, even when several 1 Watt LED's were added, these caused their own problems due to the heat they produce - in a wooden box that is full of straw and chickens.
- The Web interface as people preferred to use buttons on the front of the unit and look at the lights.
- RatLights, since alternative vermin control methods are now used that remove their need.