ChickenGuard: Smart Coops

INDUSTRY: SMART FARMING, AGRITECH

The future of farming

Chickenguard is a UK-based company that created a one-of-a-kind device for chicken owners - a smart coop door, controlled via a mobile app, with various automation scenarios. The door not only aids farmers in protecting their flocks but also enables coop door scheduling, and egg tracker among other handy features!

Challenge & path

Following the loss of several chickens from a cherished flock gifted by his mother, the company's founder was driven to offer chicken owners greater peace of mind. Born from an idea on a kitchen table, the first automated coop door has since found its way to over 70 countries!

To bring the device to a new level of convenience the ChickenGuard team decided to add connectivity and allow chicken owners to control the coop door remotely from their mobile apps. As they didn’t have a software engineer in-house, Blynk’s low-code software became a go-to solution.

Among their desired features and key goals were:

Enable coop door automation and scheduling via the mobile app
Provide real-time information on coop door status
Ensure connectivity in case the WiFi spot is far from the coop
Create a notification system
Egg tracker with historical data
Enable real-time monitoring of the device's solar battery status
Easy device activation by end users
Translate the app interface into the Italian language
Branded mobile apps with a user-friendly UI

Solution

Hardware: ESP32 + LoRa transmitters
Connectivity: WiFi, LoRa

Blynk's Business plan covered all the IoT software requirements for ChickenGuard. The team crafted a cool, branded mobile app without writing a line of code and integrated all the envisioned features using Blynk's low-code capabilities.

A smooth device activation flow by end-users was provided out of the box within Blynk.Edgent solution. To connect the device, a user just needs to enter WiFi credentials in their app.

Enhanced connectivity range was achieved by integrating LoRa transmitters with the main ESP32 hardware, ensuring stable connection for coops that are up to 1 mile away from the WiFi hotspot.

The addition of the Italian language to the ChickenGuard app was realized through the Localization Add-on. This allowed for comprehensive translations spanning the interface, emails, and all associated communication materials. You can add any language you want as well as go for multiple languages.

As a part of the commercial IoT solution Blynk platform was used to:

Set up a dedicated business cloud server
Configure web and mobile dashboards for device management and data visualization
Create branded themes for the web Console and apps
Set up necessary notifications and alerts
Configure an easy device activation flow for the end user
Translate the interface into the Italian language
Publish the ChickenGuard mobile app to Google Play

All of the above was done with the support of Blynk’s dedicated launch engineer.

Ben Braithwaite, Founder at ChickenGuard

We loved Blynk for its low-code approach and comprehensive infrastructure that includes everything - cloud, apps, web portal, and firmware libraries. The platform provided all the functionality we sought, even localization tools were at our disposal.

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