Reading the Egg lights
The Egg communicates coop status through color, motion, and — in one specific case — a chicken-like squawk. Here is the full vocabulary.
The four normal states
Section titled “The four normal states”| LED state | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Solid green | Daytime. Doors are where you expect them to be. Temperature and humidity are comfortable. | Nothing. Glance and move on. |
| Solid blue | Nighttime. Every monitored door is closed. Temperature and humidity are comfortable. | Nothing. The coop is locked down for the night. |
| Amber (pulsing) | A sensor is reporting temperature or humidity outside your configured comfort range, but not yet at an emergency level. | Worth checking. The coop may be getting too hot, too cold, or too humid. |
| Flashing red, with squawk | Something needs your attention right now. A door is in the wrong state (open at night, closed during the day, human door left ajar), or a temperature/humidity reading has crossed an emergency threshold. | Check the coop. The Egg flashes red and emits a chicken-like squawk to make sure you notice. |
Audio matches color: green, blue, and amber are silent. Only flashing red squawks.
Boot and offline states
Section titled “Boot and offline states”These are states you mostly see during setup or when something interrupts the Egg’s connection:
- Flashing white — the Egg is starting up or reconnecting to WiFi. This is the normal pattern at first power-on and after a router reboot.
- Steady white or pulsing white — the Egg has not been registered yet, or is in the middle of registration.
- Dark (no light) — the Egg has lost power, or has been disconnected from WiFi for long enough that it can no longer trust any cloud state. See Egg not lit.
Worst-case display
Section titled “Worst-case display”The Egg shows the most severe state across all your sensors. If one sensor reads comfortable but another reads a warning temperature, the Egg goes amber. If any single sensor reports an emergency condition, the Egg goes flashing red — even if every other sensor is fine.
This is intentional. Mother Hen errs on the side of surfacing problems, not smoothing them away. If the Egg is amber, at least one thing is worth a second look; if the Egg is red, at least one thing needs immediate attention.
Self-test
Section titled “Self-test”You can ask the Egg to prove it is working with a single text message:
T1234Send that — the letter T followed by your Egg’s four-character identifier, with no space — to the Mother Hen SMS number. The four-character identifier is printed on the bottom of your Egg.
The Egg cycles through red, green, and blue with a short squawk on each color, then returns to its normal state. If you see and hear the test sequence, the Egg’s hardware, WiFi link, and cloud connection are all working.
If you send the self-test and nothing happens, see Egg not lit.
Last updated: 2026-05-14.