Solar Power By Paul

Loving my D20 coop door motors. 
I thought I would share my set ups to maybe help other customers with ideas. 

I will be moving these once I get a new bigger coop built.

The doors themselves are 0.063” thick aluminum painted with epoxy paint. The door rails or guides are pieces of 5/4 deck flooring boards ripped down to the needed width and a router was used to groove out the actual slot the doors ride in. If I had this to do over, I would hold the guide rails up about an inch to keep dirt from gathering in the bottom and holding the door up. I keep having to clean them out. 

The battery is a Duracell Ultra 12 volt 8ah. It runs both doors. I have 2 timers, one for each door. I have the timers offset so as not to run both doors at the same time. The timers are 12 volt and bought off Amazon for around $9 each. The battery would probably handle both doors at once, but why push it if you don’t have to?

The solar panel is 1.5 watt bought from Harbor Freight for around $14. It does fine keeping the battery fully charged. 
The battery box I already had. They can be found at Wal-Mart or Amazon for around $10.

The motor covers I made to keep the motors dry and clean. The covers are made of Plexiglass just because I had some laying around. I would recommend using Lexan if covers are needed. Lexan would be much easier to work with. I will be mounting these indoors when the new coop is built.