Verified Reviews for Smart Automatic Chicken Coop Door

I bought this door with the attachment kit for my Eglu Cube Mk I. Install went great. I live in Texas so my chickens like to stick their heads out of the door at night for some fresh air, and the blockage sensor works perfectly.. so much so that it is too gentle to encourage them to stop doing that. I don’t want to murder them, but if it could just .. strangle them a little, that would be better. As is, sometimes the ladies will just sit there and get smacked by the door three or four times until the door gives up and stays open and I have to manually remove the birds. Thankfully, they’ve mostly learned not to do this anymore. I just wish the door would offer a setting so I can specify how many times I’d like it to retry closing until it gives up. If I want it to keep trying until the battery dies, I should be able to specify that and it should do it. This is basically the crux of my problem with the door, the control box sucks. My main issue with the control box is that when you’re operating on light sensing mode, when it reaches the desired light there is a 20 minute delay before it actually opens by default. It is programmed in such that you cannot change it. There is a delay function you can use which will ADD TIME to the already too long 20 minutes, but you cannot reduce it below that. I understand why they did this. It’s because they want to be sure that the light being perceived by the sensor is true and not just an anomaly such as a torch/flashlight so it doesn’t accidentally open in the middle of the night. I get that, but instituting a 20 minute delay that is impossible to alter is an absolutely boneheaded decision. 5 minutes would’ve been enough. 2 minutes probably would’ve been enough. If you absolutely must protect customers from their own stupidity, which I also understand, make it a function you can change but put it behind a “Are you sure?” and then an “Are you REALLY sure?” prompt. To make an arbitrary and very long mandatory waiting period like this which is hard coded into the unit is just terrible design, period. I like everything else about the door, but I wish they would give me the freedom to use the door I bought the way I want to. In the programming instructions it talks about setting the door to open at dawn. That cannot be done ever. You know why? Because 20 minutes after the sensor first detects a light level over 1 is NO LONGER DAWN. I gave this 2 stars because I like the actual door itself so much in spite of the awful programming. Truly, the programming alone deserves 1 star, but I just love the rest of it so much I had to give it another. It could be so great, but it isn’t. Why, Omlet?

The light should come on a lot sooner that before the door prepares to shut