Homemade DIY incubator - have you ever made one

[CKMore]

I want to try to make a big incubator. It will be my winter project. I purchased a used wine cooler refrigerator really cheap. It has a glass door & rails for shelves. I want to revamp it into a incubator. I thought since it has a full font glass door & is insulated it would make a great incubator.

I just wondered if anyone has made one out of a refrigerator & if you have advice of what worked & what didn't.
I want to make it as automated as possible.

Heat source;
Humidity;
Egg Turner;

To control the heat. I purchased a "Digital Thermostat temp controller" that has two outlets. First outlet controls heat & the other outlet controls cooling. So I figure that the first outlet would control the heat & the 2nd outlet would control the fan. As for the heat source, I have seen where people use a light bulb, but I have a flat food warmer tray that I think I could use in the back of the unit. My hope is that because it would take up most of the back of the fridge that the heat would be even throughout the fridge & the controller would control the heat (turn it off & on as needed)
To control the Humidity; I purchased a "Inkbird digital humidity controller with sensor". I have a small desktop humidifier that I think I can use with this controller. Just in case the fan & a pan of water is not enough for this size of unit.
Egg Turner; The egg turner, I need to contemplate on - because I'm not sure what I want to do there. I have one egg turner that plugs in (from a tabletop incubator). I haven't checked to see if it will fit in the fringe, but I think it will. I could purchase a few more of them & put a breaker bar outlet in the back of the fridge & just do that. If not, then I would have to make my own trays & egg turner. With a stepper motor I presume, but not sure exactly how it would work turning the trays. I think I would want each tray independent so I could have different stages of eggs hatching. Like first week start tray one- then 2nd week start tray two and so on. So the turning trays would need to be independent or be able to stop each trays turning, so I could be more flexible with the hatches.

Any suggestions for improvements to my idea are welcome. I'm just in the planning stage of the project.

 

[Brittanyjohnson1986]

The only thing about doing multiple hatches at one time in the same incubator is that the humidity levels are different when they go into lockdown.

 

[gpop1]

what kind of wine cooler. Does it have a compressor or is it a peltier?

 

[CKMore]

It has an compressor, but I have a nephew that works on that kind of stuff to take it out for me.

 

[gpop1]

The basic shape of a compressor based wine cooler makes for a nice incubator but it can have hot/cold spot problems due to the shape. The easiest fix is to add fans to keep the air moving but its not a exact science so plan to spend a few days playing with fans before hard mounting anything.

I built one a while back but it was majorly modified. I got a few great hatches when I had a heater failure due to some cheap relays that I used and I have never bothered fixing it.
Another serious frustration was the quality of the egg turners I bought. These were cheap slow turning plastic junk that liked to jam and over heat the motors.

If I was to try again I would probably go with a tilt table turner.

im not suggesting you follow the design I tired but it shows what I tried
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/time-to-build-another-incubator.1052404/

This is a link to a different one that I built a while back that im still using but its based on a peltier style wine cooler. Ignore the controls as you already have the controllers.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/building-a-incubator-from-a-wine-cooler.976303/

 

[CKMore]

The basic shape of a compressor based wine cooler makes for a nice incubator but it can have hot/cold spot problems due to the shape. The easiest fix is to add fans to keep the air moving but its not a exact science so plan to spend a few days playing with fans before hard mounting anything.

I built one a while back but it was majorly modified. I got a few great hatches when I had a heater failure due to some cheap relays that I used and I have never bothered fixing it.
Another serious frustration was the quality of the egg turners I bought. These were cheap slow turning plastic junk that liked to jam and over heat the motors.

If I was to try again I would probably go with a tilt table turner.

im not suggesting you follow the design I tired but it shows what I tried
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/time-to-build-another-incubator.1052404/

This is a link to a different one that I built a while back that im still using but its based on a peltier style wine cooler. Ignore the controls as you already have the controllers.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/building-a-incubator-from-a-wine-cooler.976303/

Thank you for the info. I bought some flat computer fans that I think I will use. I'm sure I will have to play around with the fans.

I have some peltier coolers that I want to play around with for a back up 12v heater
I also have some usb coffee warmer plates that are DC & will run on 12v. I want to see how warm those plates get & since they have double USB ports, I wonder if I can link more than one plate in order to make a heat chain. They are low volts, so I think it would work. I attached a photo of the usb warmer.

 

[Allen752]

I need digital humidity controller too, which one you got from Inkbird? there are so many digital humidity controller on Amazon? it is works well?

 

[CKMore]

I bought the humidity controller on Ebay; I don't know how it is going to work, since I have not got my incubator up and running yet. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Inkbird-wi...3ddc1:g:hfwAAOSwVctY5aql:sc:Other!49120!US!-1

 

[Allen752]

It is IHC-200,Looks good. Hope it works well.