Chicken Coop Sensor- Ambient Air Temp and Relative Humidity

[crank]

I have been wondering what the ambient temp and relative humidity was inside the coop. Well, now I know. I made a solar powered wireless chicken coop sensor using a Arduino and nrf24l01+ for wireless communication. The electronics enclosure is all 3D printed.








It is super easy to install, a 2" holesaw followed a quantity of 4 #6 X 3/4" woodscrews. No wiring...no fuss
The data is relayed back to Thingspeak and is posted here


It is built off a custom wireless garden sensor that I made to monitor the garden a while back.

This is just the initial version. The next one will have a dust cover for the humidity sensor and I will expand number of sensors to measure the outside ambient air temp and relative humidity. This will allow me to see how well my ventilation is working. Also, I am looking at ammonia sensors too. Anyways I got more pics and info on my blog here. This will be eventually open sourced completely. Right now, I only have the enclosure posted on thingiverse here. I need to finish up the bill of materials and post the electrical board design and corresponding software and libraries. Then when that is done anybody can make one.

 

[Rod-T]

Why? Chickens adapt. Why would you need to know. . I can see maybe temperature. If you had chicks.. but chickens?

 

[ksguy]

Why? Chickens adapt. Why would you need to know. . I can see maybe temperature. If you had chicks.. but chickens?

Because gizmos are cool, and he can. No other reason necessary. He did give a reason, though - to monitor how well his ventilation is working by comparing indoor/outdoor ambient temps, relative humidity levels, and airborne ammonia levels. Arduinos are cheap and if he enjoys the hobby and programming, why not?

@crank - Cool setup. I have a Raspberry Pi set up that isn't installed in the coop yet. It is going to be hardwired with a LAN cable to a wireless bridge I'm putting out there (the bridge isn't just for the chickens - it's to extend our wireless range to the deck which is near the coop). Pi is wired up to a 2 channel relay to trigger a screw-type garage door opener that operates the pop door. Jobs are set up using cron to trigger the garage door opener each morning and evening relative to sunrise and sunset. Times are synced to time.nist.gov. The Pi board is also set up as a web server so I can use a small interface I put on my phone to manually trigger the door or check it's open/close status. All of this is just waiting for me to run electrical to the coop so I can power it on. If I run across a temp probe on craigslist, I'll probably put that on there just to see the data - and if I happen to get a broody and hatch some chicks I'll want to know anyway.

 

[Rod-T]

I like the pop door idea.. I can see that even marketable specialy if you can make a app to operate it from your phone.
Far as the temp humidity senser. Not many people will want that..if this some kind of shark tank idea..
Kevin oleary would say I order you to take behind the coop and shoot it.
The pop door. Alot people close there's nightly.. I can see some would want that.