Automatic Humidity

[twigg]

I am working on an automatic humidity controller for incubation.

I can look at two types.

The first would be mounted inside an incubator such as the Dickey or Sportsman. The second would be a free standing unit that could be mounted to any incubator.

It would be as simple as dialing in the humidity you want, then sitting back and letting the unit manage it.

Currently, the costs are looking to be around $150 or so just for the bits .... so figure retail from there.

Anyhow ... If I get this done I'll tell y'all how I did it. If there is a market, I'll sell them.

 

[pepper48_98]

That sounds great! I bought a phenox icubator that was used to hatch emues and it had a humitity controler but the guy I bought it from didn't have the unit that fits on the water resivor, so, I have to guess what it was and try and replace it or start from scratch.

 

[CARS]

somewhere here someone was talking about humistat controls and a reptile fog machine. It sounded very controllable.

Who knows, maybe it was you twigg talking out loud and giving away your secrets?

 

[WalkingWolf]

On my homemade bator I have a water pan with a heating element in it. The element is 25 watt and comes on with the stat at the same time it kicks in. I control the amount by ventilation. But I plan to put a stat of its own on the pan in the future that will keep the humidity at a constant.

 

[twigg]

Quote:
It's a simple timer with a spray nozzle.

The reviews are mixed.

 

[flyweed]

I have been thinking about making something like this as well. What I am working on right now used a "prewired" humidistat. That means it's basically ready to plug into whatever humidifier you are going to use...Anyway, you mount the humidistat itself inside the bator..then plug in a warm air or ultrasonic humidifier to the humidistats plug in. I am using a warm steam vaporize made by "Vics" and am plumbing the output into some flexible tubing that will have an ouput mounted in the bator. This way when the humidistat calls for humidity, it turns on the vaporize and the warm, moist air blows into the bator.

In theory this should work great, but I have not tested it yet. I will be testing as soon as my batch of button quail eggs hatch.

Dan

 

[twigg]

Quote:
I thought about that too.

In theory it should work, but in practise there will be problems. Mostly, they are too big, and not responsive enough. Be interesting to see if anyone can get it to work tho.

I was thinking RH Controller and probe controlling a peristaltic pump and evaporating media in the fan airflow.

 

[flyweed]

Hmmm...you may be right. I like your peristaltic pump idea too!! I have one right now that is connected to my saltwater fish tank..it pumps "makeup water" into the sump to maintain my water level. You can get these pumps fairly cheap on ebay too.

I figure you can probably find a setting on the pump for a given humidity level and just drip that amount constantly into a "resevoir" in the bator.

The way it works on my fish tank..is the power is connected to a float switch..when the float switch drops enough it powers up the peristaltic pump and fills my "sump" until the float shuts it off again. It works great.

Dan

 

[twigg]

Quote:
You could do it that way, but that isn't automatic. I want more control or I might just as well use Sportsman's bucket

 

[flyweed]

What if you hooked the powercord of the peristalic pump up to a humidistat..so when the stat would call for more humidity the pump would pump water into a resevoir in the bator, and once the humidty reached the 'set point' it would shut the pump off. That would be a fairly simple setup as well.

Dan