building a incubator from a wine cooler

[gpop1]

got up this morning and just as I flicked on the bathroom light switch the power went out. Took me a few minutes to work out that it wasn't a problem with the light bulb.

soon realized that im not ready for a power cut on a bright sunny sunday morning before my first cup of coffee. So the time to implement a battery test was right now....lol.

Removed the battery of the lawn mower as that was the easiest to get then attached the battery to the power cord of the incubator and it instantly fired back up and quickly regained temp.

power was only off for just over a hour so it wasn't a real test more of a reminder that I need to get the proper battery and charger installed. Then I can worry about more important things like how to make a cup of coffee in the morning when the power is out.

 

[gpop1]

time for a small update:

turner is still not fixed correctly as yellow wont allow it to empty but its still working.

five different batchs of shipped eggs have been cooked (most at the same time with different hatch dates) and the hatch rate is around 40-60%, over 10 percent were clears so really the hatch rate is slightly higher. about 90% of eggs that were fertile made it to lockdown then we had a lot of late quitters that died before piping and a few that died soon after piping. I know this is expected of shipped eggs but we are working on trying to reduce this number. (no shrink wrapping noticed in eggs we checked, air cells were mis-shapped)

Next batch of shipped we will probably try to hatch upright to see if that helps

Due to the way yellow has been loading the trays lop sided it shows the motor is powerful enough to handle just about anything.

At the moment our quail are breeding well and we are setting 7-10 eggs a day (mostly buttons) and since our brother wants more chickens we are also using our first experimental incubator to keep up (hand turning a quail tray made into a see-saw in that one).

One day I might get to Finnish this project.

 

[yellowherb]

Can't help if that our quail are laying

 

[gpop1]

finally after 3-4 months of running non stop we are no longer adding eggs everyday. About another 14 days I will be able to shut the incubator/hatcher down and make some changes. Since may it has hatched over 200 button quail, 100 cortnix quail, 30 bob whites and 40 chickens.

During this time are main grips are:
1/ slippery surface in the hatcher (we had to do a temp fix with draw liner including building a fence across the front to keep the chicks away from the door).
2/ lcd screen can only be read at certain angles
3/ to many button pushes to get to the screen that makes the trays turn level
4/ the buttons are great during the day but horrible at night time
5/ the bushing I never fixed that's still laying on the desk
6/ kinked tube on the auto humidity water bottle which meant squeezing the bottle every now and then
7/ lcd light inside the incubator is to dull

if funds allowed I would move this one to the shed and build a new one as I would like the trays to tilt left to right instead of back to front. I would like the trays to be on draw runners so I can pull them out to allow easy loading/unloading of 10-20 eggs at a time.
More trays would be nice as well as a colored screen (easier to see more info at the same time) and a keypad so leveling the trays would be as simple as pushing one button.
I would also like the screen and buttons to be blue tooth ( or flex cord ) so It can be mounted or stood anywhere near the incubator rather than mounted to the door.

anythings better than the made in china yellow top thing we bought that has so far burnt out 3 heaters and ruined 3 batches, it did do one good batch on some turkeys but even then we had to use our first test incubator near the end as the heater was failing. (we didn't have a trays for turkeys or the space in the wine cooler which is why we kept trying with the china one)

 

[gpop1]

peltier (heater) died today. lucky I had a spare on hand so its back up and running. It was a used peltier so I guess 6 months wasn't to bad. I will have to get some more spares just in case.

 

[Storybook Farm]

Fabulous thread! I have a Raspberry Pi I have not used yet, so now I am intrigued.

I don't know anything about peltiers, but they sound like they are cheap but fragile. Could you install more than one, or does the wine cooler have a specific place where the peltier must be mounted? Would it make sense to mount two of them, and write code to turn the second one on if the first is on but the temperature is dropping? That way if the main unit fails the backup would go on automatically.

This is actually my wife's account on this website. She has found a dual-chamber wine cooler. It's meant to have white wine being chilled on the top, smaller section and red wine being chilled at a different temperature on the bottom section. She wants me to make this into a incubator on the bottom half and a hatcher on the top half. Does that sound feasible to you? And, are you planning on posting a wiring diagram?

We have had parents, work together on do-it-yourself filled with fish tanks, & I am a geek. I thoroughly enjoyed this thread, and hope to read more from you.

 

[gpop1]

The peltier is meant to be good for 10,000 hrs. Like all electrical items they don't like to be spiked by lightning. The good news is they are cheap and easy to replace.(out of 6 ive been running for about 6 months to a year ive had one original fail that was probably many years old and one new one that was made in china fail after 3 days the others have not been a problem)

As the incubator I built runs off 12vdc its capable of using a battery in the event of a long power cut. Short power cuts are covered by the computer ups unit that powers the transformer.

If the wine cooler you are considering has a fan unit in the back (you can see a fan behind a shroud) then its most probably a thermal cooler (peltier). The wiring can be as simple as reversing the plus and minus to the peltier then adding a simple relay that turns on and off (temp controller).

My best advice is to consider the size (width) of the cooler. If you think that you can fit a turner into the space then it should be a easy build. The first one I built I used a simple see-saw as a turner and manually turned it 3 times a day. On this one I built the turner to be automatic.

Im not sure if you can build a hatcher and incubator using a 2 compartment wine cooler (never could find one a the right price). If you think that by adding some seal strip (sticky back foam) you can stop air from being transferred between the top and bottom then im sure you can. You will probably need four small fans 60mm i think to go in the top back corners (2 per unit) these should be wired to a lower voltage (or 2 wired in series to half the rated voltage of the fans) as that will avoid hot spots and help mix the air.

If you need any help im always available.

 

[lindomar]

Hello, how are you? I'm from Brazil, I liked your project, I would try to make an incubator for me. You could share the source code? for me ..

 

[rantawi]

Hello Sir , I am from Jordan and I will be very appreciated if you can send me the code and the wiring , I am interested to build one for me .
[email protected]

 

[JekkaLynn]

Honestly 95% of what you said about mk2 went over my head...
Can you explain more about what you did with mk1? That sounded more like my level of skill...