I know there are probably easier ways to accomplish what I've done here... But I like to tinker and I had most of these parts laying around (except the LED lights themselves).
The programming works like this:
Real Time Clock with battery backup accurately keeps track of time.
Every night at 12:30AM the Arduino calculates the sunrise and sunset based on my latitude and longitude.
(LAT+LON are hard coded in at this point. If I were to do it again, I would replace the clock and use a GPS chip for both Time, Lat, and Lon)
Based on SUNSET time, it turns the lights on 14 hours before. So if sunset is at 6PM, it turns the lights on at 4AM.
Based on sunrise time, it turns the lights off to conserve power.
If number of daylight hours is more than 14 hours, it does nothing.
Original High-Tech schematic.
There were a couple of prototypes on breadboards before this iteration - but this is the product that got installed in the coop.
I used old RCA jacks for power and LED hookups so I could seal the box that the electronics are in.
Here is the 12V LED light strip across the length of the coop ceiling.
Wiring and location of the box:
The girls and I discussing their stop-work order for lack of proper permits.
Right now it's powered off an extension cord. All the connections are in this bucket and then under the coop to keep things out of the rain.
I set the lights to take 15 minutes to fade-on in the morning to make their wakeup call a little less jarring.
Phase 2: I've set the whole thing up to run on 12V (right now I'm using an old 12V laptop power brick to go from AC->DC) . I plan on setting up a 12V battery and a SOLAR trickle charger to keep it topped up.
Thanks for looking. Happy to answer questions or entertain suggestions/criticism
The programming works like this:
Real Time Clock with battery backup accurately keeps track of time.
Every night at 12:30AM the Arduino calculates the sunrise and sunset based on my latitude and longitude.
(LAT+LON are hard coded in at this point. If I were to do it again, I would replace the clock and use a GPS chip for both Time, Lat, and Lon)
Based on SUNSET time, it turns the lights on 14 hours before. So if sunset is at 6PM, it turns the lights on at 4AM.
Based on sunrise time, it turns the lights off to conserve power.
If number of daylight hours is more than 14 hours, it does nothing.
Original High-Tech schematic.
There were a couple of prototypes on breadboards before this iteration - but this is the product that got installed in the coop.
I used old RCA jacks for power and LED hookups so I could seal the box that the electronics are in.
Here is the 12V LED light strip across the length of the coop ceiling.
Wiring and location of the box:
The girls and I discussing their stop-work order for lack of proper permits.
Right now it's powered off an extension cord. All the connections are in this bucket and then under the coop to keep things out of the rain.
I set the lights to take 15 minutes to fade-on in the morning to make their wakeup call a little less jarring.
Phase 2: I've set the whole thing up to run on 12V (right now I'm using an old 12V laptop power brick to go from AC->DC) . I plan on setting up a 12V battery and a SOLAR trickle charger to keep it topped up.
Thanks for looking. Happy to answer questions or entertain suggestions/criticism
