[OBSOLETE] CoopBoss is certified! Chicken coop door controller for SmartThings

Congratulations! This is how you do it! :wink:

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John - Thanks for the quick response! Just so you know, back in December when I first found out about the CoopBoss it was from DoodleDooCoops.com http://doodledoocoops.com/. That site is down now, not sure if you were affiliated with it, but I submitted a request for info via that website’s “contact us” page. I could have also sworn that when I looked at that site’s “Buy” page for the coopboss, that they had an option to buy with a linear actuator. Anyway, just wanted you to be aware… I never did get a response from the inquiry.

Fast forward to a week ago, that brings me to my second attempt via Etsy. I am unfamiliar with Etsy, so I didn’t know to log back into Etsy and check for notifications through their site. I thought I would get an email back to my email address. So I apologize for that - I see your response when I logged onto to Etsy.

I will go ahead and order the CoopBoss from Etsy. The info you provided on the actuators is perfect - while this whole thing is a budget buster, I currently have the SmartThings hub which controls my home lighting. I don’t have any Zigbee devices, but I know that SmartThings and Zigbee should work together. We’ve recently lost a chicken to a predator, and open/close the coop door each day. Long term I need a solution that is reliable and allows us to be away for the weekend every so once in a while. I’ll get the more expensive actuator as I’d prefer the higher IP rating in the Duff.

I don’t have any more questions at this time, but I haven’t fully studied the process documentation you have for setting up the coop boss with SmartThings. It looks more involved than what I would do for my home lighting, but I should be smart enough to figure it out!

Thanks John!

Rod

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Thanks Rod for the order I was notified of it last night.

I will be here for you the whole time. Do you have you a sliding door on your coop? One of the keys to making this work long term is to have a smoothly sliding door. I have some pictures of a good door in the manual.

Sorry to hear you lost a hen. Let’s get them protected. I will send you an eMail when I ship your CoopBoss.

Thanks again for your business!!

Recently one of our new CoopBoss owners emailed me asking why his CoopBoss wasn’t closing the door when he turned off the light to the room he was testing it in. He was following the product manual and going through the setup procedure. He had his actuator attached and everything was working as expected. He could close and open the door with the SmartApp, see that the light sensor was reading a light value and everything looked fine. So as an extra step he decided to test the auto close feature. He made sure auto close was enabled in the SmartApp (door closing icon was green) and turned the light off in the room. After a few moments the light value jumped to a low enough value to trigger a close but the door did not close nothing happened. Before he took the time to install it in his coop he wanted to make sure it was working so he sent me an eMail to see what the heck was going on.

Well everything was fine and the door did auto closed for him later in the evening. You have to wait two hours after tuning off the light for the CoopBoss to auto close the door after a reboot. Keep reading if you want to know why.

Explanation: The CoopBoss has a fairly complex algorithm that uses the light level over a period of time to help it figure out what mode it should be in. When the CoopBoss is powered up it has to figure out if it should be in day mode or night mode. To give it time to make that decision it won’t do an auto close or open for two hours after a reboot. This gives the CoopBoss enough time to observe the sun and set the proper mode. Why is this so complex you ask? Heck if it is light out it is day mode if it is dark it is night mode right. Well I wish it was that simple. Without this delay the CoopBoss may incorrectly open the door in the evening if the power cycles just at the right time during sunset. Yea I know that sounds like an unlikely situation but in the Midwest it happens more than you think. Since we are this deep in the theory of operation I might as well explain the other set of times in the algorithm. The CoopBoss has another set of timers that kick in to prevent the doors from closing or opening prematurely. Say its afternoon a couple of hours before your chickens go in for the night and a bad storm blows in with thick black clouds making the light level go below the close light threshed. To prevent a premature close in this situation another timer is used to make sure roughly 24 hours has passed since the last time the door was closed. A similar timer is used to keep the door from opening at night. After all you don’t want the door to open just because of a passing car’s headlights or you turn on a light in your backyard to check on things.

This algorithm allowed us to design the CoopBoss without an internal clock. That was one of the original design requirements. If we based the auto open and close on time, then we would have to make sure the clock is always set correctly and have to keep track of when the sunsets at your location. We wanted to make sure the CoopBoss was as independent as possible, so it wouldn’t have to rely on the internet once it was configured and up and running. Since we don’t have to rely on batteries to keep a timing circuit running we don’t have any batteries inside the CoopBoss. That is a big deal as the CoopBoss is used in extreme temperatures that batteries would not be able to survive.

There you have it, probably way more than you every wanted to know about how the CoopBoss figures out what to do next. :slight_smile:

Also posted on the CoopBoss support forum

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It is this level of detail in the development of the CoopBoss that has drawn me to it. I can’t wait to try it out. Our coop is 170’ from the ST Hub. Our network is Z-wave, so I just ordered some cheap Zigbee light bulbs to act as repeaters that I can put out in the yard (if needed) and do some testing. As soon as I figure out if and where any repeaters need to be placed, I’m ordering!

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@TracySmith not sure a ZigBee light will be a good repeater. There has been several discussions on this forum about how they don’t work as well as advertised when it comes to repeating ZigBee traffic. I have experienced that as well. My wife has her two coops on an island out back of our house each with a CoopBoss. I installed 4 hue bulbs on the edges of the bridge (see the picture) thinking they would help repeat the signal if necessary. Well it turned out even though they are closer to the house they ended up connecting to a CoopBoss and then the CoopBoss connects to the hub in the house. The CoopBoss has an external ZigBee antenna and is designed to be mounted outside (out of direct sunlight) so it usually has better range then your typical ZigBee device.

One cool thing about the hue bulb is there is a SmartApp for the CoopBoss that will set the bulb’s color based on the door status. When the coops close at night the bridge lights change to green. When they open in the morning they change to blue. We don’t even look at the smartphone anymore if we are home we just glance out at the bridge to see if the lights are green.

Rod’s CoopBoss install is worth checking out. I really like the aluminum h channel he used to frame the door and allow it to slide easily. He even shared where he ordered everything!

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Nice!!! All you need now is for the “draw bridge” to raise and even an army will have trouble getting on the island, LOL.

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Thanks @JohnR - Much appreciated. It looks like our coops are about the same distance from the house - at least taking a visual guess. The lights having limited range is not much of a surprise, I guess. I was thinking it would give me just a little indication of range before I went full-in on the C.B. Our hub is 10’ from the rear exterior wall (french doors) but we have a brick & stick house, so I just wanted to make absolutely sure we could get a signal out there before committing 100%.

And thanks! Yes, I did see Rod’s CoopBoss Install the other day and actually had the h-channel page still open in my browser. That’s pretty slick and will work great in our case. We have a 4x12 coop with 2 doors that empty into a fenced area (we have some neighbors who don’t care for animals, unfortunately). I’ll try a C.B. on one of the doors and see how that works out. Thanks a bunch!
-T

I have been testing integration with the Amazon Echo and worked up a little demo:

Here is thread on the details: Two Roosters, Two Coops, and girl named Alexa

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That is REALLY awesome!!

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Thanks! We use it every day!! Here is a little write up I did on it: Two Roosters, Two Coops, and girl named Alexa

John,
I’m your latest customer for coopboss. I live in the suburbs and my HOA allow chickens. Some of my neighbors have llamas. So chickens are fine. I am a beginner, these chickens came from the kids hatching eggs for school. So I’m a real noobie. I am not getting up to open the door. So I bought the coopboss. On the feeding, read somewhere that chickens should not be over fed. I.E., 0.3 lbs of feed a day per chicken, If I put a 30lb bucket of feed for them “all you can eat”, will that be over-feeding? If it is then I will need to ration the feed daily. An auger in a drain pipe comes to mind… Coopboss can turn on the auger when the door opens each morning to dispense a daily ration of feed. Can someone please advise? The water will be “all you can drink”. I plan on using the “cup-float” rather than the nipple.
I am also thinking of the orbit predator system to spray water on coyotes, etc… Wish I can do that with coopboss too but I think there’s no more GPIO left.

thanks,

Chin Lee

PS. Have you figured out how to automate the egg-collection :wink:

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Welcome to the CoopBoss family! I’m not an expert on feeding chickens but I did ask my wife and she said the chickens won’t overgraze to the point of being sick unless they are meat chickens. Meat chickens are bread to eat and get big fast and they will eat and eat and you may have to keep an eye on them if that is what you have. She has egg layers maybe someone else can chime in on meat chickens. Otherwise she said the only problem with putting that much food out at once is it may spoil if it gets wet. I know in the winter when she keeps her hens inside all day she keeps a feeder in there full of food and they eat whenever they are hungry. They do need a lot of water so keeping the water full and clean is important. We have a lake out back the hens can drink out of but she keeps bowls of water around the house and in the coops so they don’t have to go far to get a drink. Egg layers drink a lot of water!

Hope you don’t have coyotes once they figure out how to get a hen they will keep coming for more. The best defense I have seen for coyotes is dog that has been raised around chickens. Our son’s dog was a fantastic protector of the hens. We never had problems with coyotes until he moved out and took his dog with him.

Sorry no automatic egg-collectors on the drawing boards.

Keep us posted on your progress!

John,
Thanks for the tips. Makes sense about feeding. So I’ll just do the 5 gallon bucket feeder raised off the ground.
Coyotes are my main concern. I think I’ll try the orbit yard enforcer.

Can coopboss’ second button be used as a motion sensor input ? Thus trigger a sprinkler valve? also turn on floodlights via smartthings.

thanks,

Chin Lee

Yes the second button could be connected to set of dry contacts that are normally open and close when motion is detected. You would have to create a smart-app back on the SmartThings side to act on the button push. All the clusters and endpoints are documented in the manual. Keep in mind whenever the second button is pushed the Aux 1 output also toggles. See page 21 of the CoopBoss Product Manual to see how to wire up AC relays to the Aux1 and Aux2 outputs.

I’m wondering how does everyone bring power to the coopboss.

The adapter cable is not long, I installed the coopboss under the roof of the coop and I’m thinking maybe a power strip under the coop. But the adapter cable is not long enough to reach the roof. I might have to move the coopboss to under the coop as well.

I am thinking of an extension cord from an outdoor gfci outlet to the coop. Any better suggestions?

This is my chicken coop: http://www.homedepot.com/p/SummerHawk-Ranch-Vintage-Red-Barn-Chicken-Coop-33554/205745336

yup the coopboss costs more than the chicken coop.

I installed an outdoor rated GFI outlet close to our coop then ran a short extension cord from it to the power brick tucked up inside.

I am interested in purchasing the CoopBoss but can’t seem to figure out how! I have gone to both coopboss.com and amazon. Can you help?

John,
I want to use ST to turn on a smart LED bulb in the chicken coop when the light level is below a certain threshold? However, I found a smartapp in the marketplace but it cannot get the light-level from the CoopBoss DHT? Do you know how?

thanks,

Chin

Couple of things to try. Take a look at the smartapps for the CoopBoss web site. A couple years ago I wrote a Coop light management SmartApp that may come close to what your looking for. If not (on that same website) take a look at the Advanced Features section. If you install the virtual CoopBoss custom device handler and SmartApp that goes with it you should see a Lux value from the CoopBoss light sensor. That is probably what your SmartApp is looking for.