Hey everybody, I just wanted to let you know about a little incubator hack I discovered this weekend. I had some extra eggs from an order that wouldn't fit under my broody hen, so I scrounged around my electronics drawers and came up with a simple but effective solution.
I had an old electric cooler (the kind that plugs into a cigarette lighter socket in your car) that I picked up at a thrift store for $6. It uses a Peltier cooler (a solid chunk of a special semiconductor metal that works as a heat pump when you apply voltage to it), and to turn the cooler into a heater, all you have to do is reverse the polarity on the Peltier element.
I opened it up, switched the pos/neg wires on the Peltier element to turn it into a heater, and added a cheap thermostat/relay board that I got on eBay for $4 a while back for another project. It's all pretty simple wiring and there is no need for soldering, although soldering is safer than crimping wires.
I put a glass of water inside it to increase humidity and covered it with aluminum foil with a few holes in it to slow evaporation. I put a humidity meter I had laying around inside it to make sure the humidity was right, and it's staying at a steady 65%.
Right now the whole setup is powered by a 12V 4A AC/DC adapter that I got at thrift store for $2. All in all, this set me back $12. Now the tricky part will be slipping the chicks under my broody when they all hatch
I had an old electric cooler (the kind that plugs into a cigarette lighter socket in your car) that I picked up at a thrift store for $6. It uses a Peltier cooler (a solid chunk of a special semiconductor metal that works as a heat pump when you apply voltage to it), and to turn the cooler into a heater, all you have to do is reverse the polarity on the Peltier element.
I opened it up, switched the pos/neg wires on the Peltier element to turn it into a heater, and added a cheap thermostat/relay board that I got on eBay for $4 a while back for another project. It's all pretty simple wiring and there is no need for soldering, although soldering is safer than crimping wires.
I put a glass of water inside it to increase humidity and covered it with aluminum foil with a few holes in it to slow evaporation. I put a humidity meter I had laying around inside it to make sure the humidity was right, and it's staying at a steady 65%.
Right now the whole setup is powered by a 12V 4A AC/DC adapter that I got at thrift store for $2. All in all, this set me back $12. Now the tricky part will be slipping the chicks under my broody when they all hatch
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