Ralf’s Automated Chicken Haven, Kitzingen, Germany

Ralf used The Garden Coop walk-in chicken coop plans as a starting point for his fully insulated and highly automated chicken coop. The result is both beautiful and functional — and from the sound of it, a lot of fun to put together. The rest of this post comes directly from him. . . 

We just wanted to share our chicken coop result based on your chicken coop plans. We modified the roof and some other details because we had wood with different dimensions available. The coop has an 8cm Pavatex damping (insulation) because sometimes we have a strong winter (-26°C /-14.8°F).

We added a “technical” case for batteries and a charger for a solar panel, LED lights, an automatic door opener, a bottom drawer, an inspection chamber, a window, an “outdoor” perch.

In the pictures you can see the WLAN stick outside of the faraday cage, the cabling, the temperature sensors in the “electric box.” Inside the coop: the fans, the batteries, the solar panel, the day and night cameras, and the LED flooder. I have also installed a presence detector (not in the pictures).

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I have written some Python programs and Shell scripts which are controlling the PiFace module of the Raspberry Linux box. It is creating RRD graphs every 5 minutes for temperature and controlling the fans and lights. There is also implemented a motion detection for the night cam.

It was a great fun to build this chicken coop, especially for our 8-year-old son Vincent!

Many thanks to Ralf for sharing his pictures and ideas. He has built and customized an amazing chicken coop using The Garden Coop plans as a starting point!

Like what he has built? Please let him know with a comment below. Then browse more of our Make It Your Own chicken coop profiles.