It opens and closes the door of my wife's chicken coop based on Sunrise and Sunset times so that she doesn't have to. This is a refinement of the Cluck2Sesame project, building on lessons learned from the original attempt. Notably:
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The parts are not based on what I have lying around, but rather on parts selected for the job or known to do the job. This has also simplified the design somewhat - more pins on the PIC mean the shift register is no longer required, for example. The newer PIC is smaller, integrates more peripherals and comes with more flash; the original project ran out of flash before all features could be implemented.
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The shortcomings in the end-of-travel detection, namely measuring motor current for stall torque, hastened battery depletion. A rotary-encoder based approach will be used instead, which will hopefully lengthen battery life.
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A solar charger will be included as replacing the battery, fairly regularly as it turned out, meant unscrewing the enclosure.
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The motor will be a 6V model rather than a 12V model and run directly from the battery rather than off an SMPS. No SMPS means a smaller BOM and no power wasted by the high motor currents. This should extend battery life even further, at the expense of varying speed. But that's not an issue.
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The PCB will be made in China, and the board house charges the same price regardless of whether the PCB is the size of the enclosure or the size of the LCD module. This means that the aluminium backplate can be replaced with a PCB, providing more flexibility and space for layout and mounting while reducing the cost and time of the build.
That said, some of the parts from the original have been incorporated into the newer design since they are known to work and are already stocked in my parts bins.
Because 'Cluck Cluck Sesame' is obviously what the chickens would say if they needed to open a door.
The hardware and firmware are all mine. The board is based around a PIC16F15356. It's a beefier evolution of what was used last time that has allowed considerable simplification of the board through more integration and a higher pin count.
None yet. But there will be.
