The project in mind is a reliable automatic door opener for a Guinea Fowl (think chickens) coop with a budget of well under $100. This door, 18"x18", can be designed to lift, slide, swing, whatever, and I will do that once I identify what type of motive power I will use. An interesting thing about Guinea Fowl is that the timer that controls the opening and closing needs to be referenced to sunrise and sunset, with programmable offsets, and I have identified a commercial controller (110VAC) to take care of that task at an acceptable price. What remains to source is a suitable actuator, and the best case is adapting something dirt cheap to the task without much modification.
One common device that came to mind is an electric car window motor. I can find nothing on the web about their actual sequence of operation, and I’m wondering if any of you have experimented with them and determined how they actually work. My main questions are:
- They must have limit switches to automagically stop the motor at the upper and lower limits of travel. Are these limit switches built in the the mechanism?
- What is the typical control input? I imagine that it is polarity reversal applied to 2 power wires.
Most of my power transmission ideas are based upon cables. I envision a pulley added to the mechanism of an appropriate size to limit the door’s travel.
Thanks in advance for any input!