What is the set up process for Mother Hen™?

Mother Hen is designed to be up and running in about an hour, with no electrician, no home Wi-Fi at the coop, and no app to install.

Before You Start — What You Need

• A vertically-opening automatic chicken door already installed on your coop. (V1 supports vertically-opening doors only. Mother Hen doesn’t include a door — it watches the one you already own.)
• One 110V outlet in the coop. Any source: grid, solar with an inverter, or generator. This powers the Coop Controller.
• Tools: A screwdriver and a few screws for sensor mounting.
• A web browser on any computer, tablet, or phone to log in to your customer portal after the Controller comes online. SMS alerts arrive without logging in.

Step-by-Step

1. Plug in the Coop Controller
   Mount the Controller inside the coop and plug it into your 110V outlet. It powers on and begins connecting over cellular automatically.
2. Mount the chicken-door position sensor
   Attach the position sensor to your existing automatic chicken door so the Controller can tell whether it’s open or closed. No wiring into the door’s motor — the sensor reads position, it does not drive the door.
3. Mount the Coop Climate Sensor and Door Monitor
   Screw the sensor to the frame of any opening you want to monitor — a human access door, window, nest box lid, hatch, or run gate — and attach the matching magnet to the moving side. The sensor also reports coop temperature and humidity at its location, so place it somewhere representative. (You can also deploy a sensor in temperature/humidity-only mode on an interior wall, near a roost, or inside a brooder.)
4. Wait for the Controller to come online
   The Controller self-provisions over cellular — no phone pairing required, no Wi-Fi credentials to type in, no QR-code dance. When it’s registered with the cloud, it shows up in your account automatically.
   (Exact self-provisioning flow is being finalized. The operator-facing experience will be “plug it in and wait,” with no BLE pairing steps.)
5. Plug in The Egg indoors
   Plug The Egg into any 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi-covered outlet inside your home (or a friend’s home). Once online, it mirrors the status of your coop.
6. Final setup in the customer portal
   Log in to your customer portal from any browser, claim your Controller, confirm your coop’s location (for sunrise/sunset math), set alert preferences and temperature thresholds, and add SMS recipients. Done.

Install Requirement Recap

• 110V outlet in the coop — required. Any source.
• Cellular coverage — the Controller ships cellular-only at launch.
• Home Wi-Fi — only needed indoors for The Egg, not at the coop.

No home Wi-Fi at the coop. No app to install. No door to install. Plug in the Controller, mount two sensors, plug in The Egg, finish in the customer portal.

Prototype active in Tennessee and Colorado. Join the waitlist →