Strut

My auto door isn't timed, it uses a photosensor to detect dawn and dusk to match the clock of the birds and their natural behavior. Detecting the birds themselves is problematic, as their isn't much difference in a plump hen and small red fox knocking on the door (of which I have a lot of here)

My "coop" runs on solar power for everything. I have a 100w panel and 60ah battery to run my charge controller, volt meter, thermostat controlled exhaust fan, motion detecting led spot light, several indoor led lights, and a small 200w inverter for minor 120v needs. In reality this building is a small "garden workshop"/greenhouse with a small area segregated off for a few birds to sleep in. To call this a "coop" is a bit of a stretch on my part, but that's where the initial idea spawned (all because my parents took me inquiring about guinea hens to control the ticks around the house, into meaning they should buy me a bunch of various fowl hatchlings at the local market...Thanks again, mom)

Let me know if you'd like more info.

I didn't see anything in the netmf networking stack to make this easy. I believe NetServerEnum is only going to work for full-fledged Windows OS, I think you could open a socket on an obscure port on each duino and then just sweep or broadcast the subnet looking for a (predefined?) response from your nodes.

I'm thinking of doing something similar, but I plan on handling everything on the netduinos. I plan to make a wireless/wired mesh of cooperative devices that are aware of each other and are capable of taking over the delegation of services and duties if one falls off the network for any reason.

That bit me once too. Not as intuitive as it should be. Glad you worked it out.