My electric chicken door. A quick video.

When you are a chicken keeper you can do a lot of walking. You always need to make sure that they are let out bright and early. Making sure they are secure at dusk is very important since everything loves to eat chicken. I don't always get back in time to make sure that my flock is secure so I built this automatic chicken door for their coop. It has worked great for the past year, letting them out in the morning and securing them at night. I made it resemble a Sci-Fi air lock for a little irony and added fun.
The system as I built it uses a 12 volt DC linear actuator to run the door. It is controlled by a timer which has to maintain a proper setting throughout the year to roughly approximate the best day/night times to operate it. I am going to build a light controlled version but so far the timer set up has worked good enough.