Some pics of the Automatic Pidgeon Feeder...The idea came about after reading an article in the HomeAutomator mag regarding a Kitty Feeder that one of the Guys had made....
The tubes that hold the pidgeon food is Clipsal heavy duty underground conduit which I sourced from my local Electrical wholesalers..The solenoids are 12v dc but im driving them with 24vdc for approx 5 seconds . Needs that little extra grunt....
Im using my 8 in 8 out pic controller to control the 7 solenoids (one for each day of the week)...Im using mecury switches on the trap doors to monitor trap door status..
Every evening at 5 pm Genesis triggers a relay output which is monitored by the feeder. When this signal is received the feeder,s Pic checks each trap door sequentially to see if opened. If a door is closed it will operate its solenoid for approx 5 seconds.. After the delay expires it checks to see if the door did open if not it triggers a beeper for 10 minutes on the pidgeon feeder to attract attention........If all trap doors are open when checked the beepers sounds for 20 minutes approx... There is an 8 way relay board behind the 8 in 8 out module to drive the relays and beeper..
The feeder has been in use for quite a while now and works quite well.. Now and again a solenoid sticks and I installed a button which is located under the controller to retigger the solenoid if this happens.. The feeder also reqiures some sort of enclosure to protect it from the rain as this is the main cause when the solenoids stick...