Hello everyone! Wanted to share a chicken coop automation project I’ve been working on. The core idea was simple — I didn’t want the coop to become a second job. I wanted something that actually takes care of itself and only bothers me when something really needs my attention. It started as a simple idea but grew into a full system with custom hardware, edge AI for real-time bird detection, automated hatch control with safety systems, smart lighting based on poultry research, and self-healing automation that only notifies you when it actually matters. Most of this runs on Home Assistant. Still a work in progress but here’s where it’s at so far and when it progresses I’ll add more pics 
English isn’t my native language, so I hope nobody minds spelling mistakes
Feature list:
- Edge AI real-time bird detection & counting.
- Predator/anomaly detection (fox shows up → hatch closes automatically) - phone notification
- Automated hatch control with linear actuator, multiple speed profiles, auto-calibrating
- IEC 61131-3 safety logic, dual-channel safety curtain, overcurrent protection
- Smart lighting tuned per bird type (laying hens / growing / incubation)
- CO₂-driven ventilation, sunrise/sunset-based day/night cycle - compensating light levels inside the coop according to the actual need.
- Self-healing system — recovers on its own, only alerts you when human intervention is needed - hybrid approach to the modules - meaning if one is down or vice versa something is down the system can operate in “limp” mode.
- Custom carrier board
- Tamper detection of modules, remote control, real-time diagnostics
*Edge AI — Real-Time Detections
*The image shows a camera feed from a chicken coop with AI-object detection. Each bird identified with a bounding box, assigned a unique ID (“Lind ID:7” means “Bird ID:7”), and given a confidence score percentage.
*Edge AI Features:
Local on-device model for real-time bird detection and counting
Secondary validation using a second AI model to analyze the scene and interpret it in a human-readable format - also gets us much higher failsafe % so we dont get false positive readings :).
*Anomaly detection: identifies predators, foreign animals theres alot of options possible but mostly for me the case was predators and other animals, counting.
*Bird count monitoring: detects if any birds have been left outside
*Species recognition capability
*Automatic summary reports in Estonian sent.
Diagnostics:
*Every module status in real time
*One human-readable status info
*Fault events
*Three levels: auto-recovery / manual reset / permanently locked
IoT Connectivity:
*WiFi + MQTT, TLS, Ethernet
*Home Assistant auto-discovery and detection.
*Real-time monitoring (position, consumption, diagnostics, faults)
*Remote control: open / close / stop
*Remote profile switching
*Remote reset and configuration
*Time-based access EET/EEST + daylight saving support
Network Architecture:
*Dual broker MQTT
*Validation between brokers to detect man-in-the-middle attacks, fake commands, connections, duplicate modules
Lighting:
- For laying hens:
- For growing birds
- For incubation
"This is a prototype showcasing a work in progress - the idea is to show what’s possible with Home Assistant and IOT. Many of the solutions are being tested and improved, more added as time and budget allows. There’s no commercial interest or monetary benefit behind this project — just my own time and investment, trying to build something good on a reasonable budget.
Big thanks to:
*Home Assistant for the open source platform
*Espressif for microcontrollers
*Hailo for edge AI
*DFRobot for sensors
*Seeed Studio for hardware
*Shelly for smart modules
*Nabu Casa for HA cloud access
*Node-RED for data manipulation.
Countless more i can´t probably remember
If anyone’s interested in the full tech stack or how any of it works, feel free to ask — I’m happy to share!"
I will post below about the different parts of the project.
