Well, I've made my self an incubator - like most of you
.
I've wanted to know how cheap can a good incubator get.
So I did it from scratch. I thought I should share it with you. I guess this is the best place to do it.
SO....
The walls are made of polistyrene - the kind you use to isolate home walls.
The thermostat is self made using a microcontroller, a thermistor (a resistence that changes it's value with the temperature), a led display and .... a few other pieces.
I have also made myself an egg turner from a cd unit motor and a switch from the cd unit and .. of course a microcontroller. The egg turner is not very used right now however since it hold 50 eggs and I do not have more than 10 at time. So i use a smaller incubator now with the same model of thermostat.
The heating element is ... of course... a lightbulb.
This is an image made during the first tryout of the incubator. The temperature is in centigrades since I live in Romania.
This is the thermostat alone after ansembly:
The module in the left is used to also connect the ventilator (a pc cooler - well I'm an IT guy
).
This last picture is not very clear but you can see the "heating element":
So that's it. And it works like a charm.
And now for the price .... a full 5.84 $. The most expensive pieces were the microcontroller - arround 1 $, the relay the same, and the led display - 1 $. The walls were 1 $. The walls are sticked together using some wood screws.
Just for fun a picture with the hatcher (self made of course
)
