wendalgar Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 Has anyone fathomed out a way to make one of these? We just cannot justify the massive prices of the automated ones for sale on line and wondered if any bright sparks out there had fathomed out a DIY method they'd be willing to share with me and my girls!!! Please!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lavenders_Blue Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 I'm sure someone on the Practical Poultry forum had designed one and had made the plans available. Might be worth looking/asking over there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alet_chicken Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 Hi, the full details of the DIY one mentioned on the Practical Poultry website is available at http://www.electrichen.co.uk/. That site says an automatic hole opener can be made for £20 by somebody with the know-how (which I don't have, sadly). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon888 Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 I made one for my birds. i used a light sensitive switch from maplins which can be run to be normally opened and normally closed depending on how you wire it up. This was wired in to a DPDT relay which would alternate the running of an electric motor (also from maplins) to open and close the doors. Each loop from the relay to the motor was wired in to a switch at the top and at the bottom of the sliding door to cut the motor once the door was either closed or open. The only problem i encountered was my door being made of slate which would cause the motor to relax once it reached the top switch and making the circuit again meaning my door bounced in the up position. To counter this i fitted a latching relay to be activated the up switch cutting the power to the motor and staying cut. Then the bottom switch would reactivate that relay when the door closed which didnt matter as that particular circuit had been broken by the light sensitive switch. This worked really well through the summer but when it got dark i found i was locking my ducks out all the time as they dont mind the dark so i abandoned it and have just bolstered up my run and leave the door open all the time now. If you make the door out of somehting light, like thin sheet of aluminium it would work fine without the latching relay and would be quite a simple circuit.(i'll draw one up in cad at lunch n post it somewhere). I wasnt going to dismantle my house to change the door though. that cost me about £30 to make although i did buy a soldering iron and a load of wire which you may already have. I ran it all off a car battery that i had spare but you could easily run it off a an old 12v charger plugged in to your mains. Jon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon888 Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 Uploaded with ImageShack.us Hopefully this will make sense. The main thing is to make sure your motor/gearbox has enough oomph to lift your door and hold it in position. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon888 Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 Argh a line has been cut off but they just join up to go to the power source. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bouldercroft Posted February 11, 2011 Share Posted February 11, 2011 we have a spare door kit for the arriving soon - once it's here my hubby is going to work on making an auto door opener for the I see a wallace and gromit like experience in my future.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
