Reimagining the chicken coop with predator detection, Wi-Fi control, and more

The traditional backyard chicken coop is a very simple structure that typically consists of a nesting area, an egg-retrieval panel, and a way to provide food and water as needed. Realizing that some aspects of raising chickens are too labor-intensive, the Coders Cafe crew decided to automate most of the daily care process by bringing some IoT smarts to the traditional hen house.

Controlled and actuated by an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi and a stepper motor, respectively, the front door of the coop relies on a rack-and-pinion mechanism to quickly open or close at the scheduled times. After the chickens have entered the coop to rest or lay eggs, they can be fed using a pair of fully-automatic dispensers. Each one is a hopper with a screw at the bottom which pulls in the food with the help of gravity and gently distributes it onto the ground. And similar to the door, feeding chickens can be scheduled in advance through the team’s custom app and the UNO R4’s integrated Wi-Fi chipset.

The last and most advanced feature is the AI predator detection system. Thanks to a DFRobot HuskeyLens vision module and its built-in training process, images of predatory animals can be captured and leveraged to train the HuskyLens for when to generate an alert. Once an animal has been detected, it tells the UNO R4 over I2C, which in turn, sends an SMS message via Twilio.

More details about the project can be found in Coders Cafe’s Instructables writeup.

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