Lighting controller to supplement natural light to ensure a fixed minimum amount of daily light for egg laying.
Supply supplemental lighting to winter chicken housing so that the combination of natural and supplemental lighting keeps the birds in light for X hours/day
- light should never immediately turn off (chickens will be lost & confused)
- to minimize power consumption, don't light more than needed to hit the X hour goal (so supplemental lighting time should adapt to natural light cycles)
- supply a red-light-only "human maintenance mode" (operated by switch)
- wifi (use esp8266?)
- add temp/humidity sensor
- battery power + solar? (would need big battery)
- Arduino. I've us both an original Diecimila and Sparkfun's Uno clone, but almost anything in the *duino family should work.
- 3-color LED strip. (e.g. https://www.adafruit.com/products/346)
- MOSFETs to switch power into the LED strip (https://www.adafruit.com/product/355)
- Adequate power supply (depends on details of your chosen LED strip) (https://www.adafruit.com/products/352)
- Light sensitive resistor (https://www.adafruit.com/product/161)
- Real-time clock (https://www.adafruit.com/products/264)