My kid (14 y.o.) is on a local contest in implementing IoT, and this time theme of contest was "animals". We had 1 month to design and create a functional project, and we just finished it.
Video is with explanations in Croatian, so I will give additional explanations here:
- Door can be controlled remotely
- Door can be set to auto mode, when we use RFID sensors on both sides of the door so that chickens can pass, but predators can not
- Whenever each chick goes in or out, we see on our app where is it
- When door is automatically opened or closed, we see condition of door on app
- Chicken koop monitors intensity of light (svjetlo), and decide if it will allow door to be opened. During the day, chicks can pass freely. During the night, they can not go out, but they can go in.
- "Kolicina" is showing how much food there is in the tank. After filling, 63%.
- Servo motor is releasing the food from the tank
- Koop has air vent and heater (grijalica) represented with green and red leds. Each can be controlled remotely.
- Automatic heat control works with min/max temperatures set in the code. When heat is below min, it turns on the heater. When heat is above max, it turns on the vent. Demonstrated with hair drier that is overheating the koop.
- When koop is overheated, and we try to remotely turn off vent, it does not work. Only after we turn off auto temp, we can again control vent and heater manually.
Parts:
- MKR1000
- MFRC-522 (x2) RFID reader
- DHT11 Heat/moisture sensor
- LM393 light sensor
- SG90 (x2) servo motor
- HC-SR04 ultrasonic proximity sensor
My kid started with preparations for this project by listing all animals she can think of, then a list of needs for animals and for owner, problems that each have, etc. Then she had to decide what animal/need/problem she will solve and highlight that as a goal for this project. I was surprised she picked chickens since we live in a city and don't know much about chicks. But she said, let's see what would any person from the city need if he wish to have some livestock far away from home.
So we ended with a list of small goals, and then we started solving one by one. For most of solutions, we had to google to see how other have solved it. We did not invented anything, we just combined many known solutions into one project. Some advises and ideas we got on this forum, i.e. to use RFID sensors to track where are the chicks.
We learned so much, and had a great fun together. I hope you like it.