Little Giant 9300 Digial Control Owner Testing Comparison. ( Programming Errors ? )

[dboling]

This thread is for owners of the Little Giant 9300 Incubator to compare the digital controls on there Little Giant 9300, It is not for discussing hatches, hatch results, bird types, ect .

My Little Giant 9300 arrived last week and It looked and worked great, up until I decided I should be running the temp at 100.5 for still air as my local extension office suggests. This is when I discovered what appears to be programming errors within the digital controller unit. The controller unit appears to be right on the money when it comes to reading temperature from it's sensor bulb. However the issue became apparent when setting a temperature other that 99.5 degrees. Since I have eggs in the incubator I am only will do my testing in a range that won't harm the eggs as I'd like them to hatch. We all know the 9300's Humidity meter doesn't read correctly, so we don't need to discuss that.

These are my results.

Setting heater(on) heater(0ff) Maintains
---------------------------------------------------------
99.5 99.5 100.0 99.5
100.0 99.0 99.5 99.5
100.5 99.5 100.0 100.0
101.0 100.0 100.5 101.5
101.5 100.5 101.0 101.0


It could be I just have a bad controller unit or maybe there's more to it than that.
Bottom line: The heater should not shutoff until the control unit display reads the set temperature and should go on below the set temperature.

Anybody else do any testing of their control unit and get these results ?

 

[Jeanette56]

I am already using my unit.
1. My original unit had a faulty control panel. It would not allow the temperature to be adjusted. I called Miller Manufacturing and they happily sent me a new computer control unit.
2. I love the new design of this unit because the bottom section is much deeper. I also like that the grate is plastic instead of metal. The water channels are also improved.
3. I do Not trust the temperature or humidity reading on the control unit, so I use a thermometer/hygrometer inside the unit that I trust.
4. My biggest complaint is that once you get the temperature set (easy to do) you are still likely to get a major spike in temperature for no apparent reason. For the first few days the temps stayed pretty stable, but today I had two big spikes. My thermometer (one that I trust!) read 106 first thing this morning. I opened the unit to turn the eggs and let it cool for a couple of minutes. A couple of hours later it read 108...yikes! I let the unit cool down and it's been perfect the rest of the afternoon.


I don't really regret getting this unit, but I will be glad when I get my homemade incubator finished. I had originally bought the 9300 in hopes of using it strictly as a hatcher. Time and unforeseen occurrences caused me to use it as an incubator first. It should make a great hatcher.

 

[dboling]

3. I do Not trust the temperature or humidity reading on the control unit, so I use a thermometer/hygrometer inside the unit that I trust.
4. My biggest complaint is that once you get the temperature set (easy to do) you are still likely to get a major spike in temperature for no apparent reason. For the first few days the temps stayed pretty stable, but today I had two big spikes. My thermometer (one that I trust!) read 106 first thing this morning. I opened the unit to turn the eggs and let it cool for a couple of minutes. A couple of hours later it read 108...yikes! I let the unit cool down and it's been perfect the rest of the afternoon.

I've had mine for over a month now. I also called the manufacture about the temp spikes and the poor programming that I stated above. little giant also send me a new controller unit, however it did not fix any of the problems. I started my hatch in my older little giant 7200 which has worked flawlessly for many years. When the new 9300 arrived from incubator warehouse I moved the hatch over to the new incubator. the 9300 was supposed to include a fan kit but they forgot to ship it. I ran the 9300 as a still air and it held the temp almost perfect where ever I placed the units temp probe. from the front to the rear of the unit there is a 4 - 5 degree temp difference, so I had all my eggs at the rear of the incubator. The fan kit arrived and I installed it, and that is when I started having problems with temp spikes. The old controller had temp spikes at the rear of the incubator of 105.5 and the new controller had one of 109.5. I Immediately moved my hatch back to the little giant 7200 since I could not trust the 9300. none of the eggs hatched from the area where I had the temp spikes. most of the eggs hatched from the area where the 9300s temp probe was located.

The 9300s concept is great, however the designing is a grade F. While the 7200 was incubating my hatch I ran the 9300 along side testing it.

In my opinion, this is why the 9300 has massive heat spikes:

The power supply does not provide enough power to fully run the fan and the heater at the same time.
if you listen to the unit while the heater is cycling on and off, the fan will slow to a crawl when the heater comes on, this builds massive heat in the top of the incubator until the units heat probe detects enough temp to turn off the heater at which time speeds the fan back up and pushes all the massive heat along the sides of the incubator at 105+ degrees. now the units heat probe has cooled and the whole process continues until the incubators temp has stabilized. The also happens when you open the incubator to check the water or candle the eggs.

Due to predators killing all my turkey hens and leaving my 3 year old tom turkey alive, I've started another hatch run with 4 turkey eggs that were in the nesting box and another dozen chicken eggs. all eggs will be incubated in the 7200 until day 18, at which time I'll unplug the fan on the 9300 and place the chicken eggs in the 9300 for lock down. The turkey eggs are the most important so they will stay in the 7200 until hatched.

I like the concept of the 9300, but can't trust it running forced air.

I think I have a fix for mine that will correct the temp spike issue. I'm going to give the fan it's own 12v power supply so the heat circulates while the heaters going, instead of being circulated after the fact.

 

[Jeanette56]

In my opinion, this is why the 9300 has massive heat spikes:
The power supply does not provide enough power to fully run the fan and the heater at the same time.
Interesting information about the fan. IF I decide to get a fan I will consider a separate power source.


However, I am not running a fan and I still got the heat spikes. I'm also running it on a good quality surge protector, so it would seem that the spikes are a design flaw.
It's fun to play with these things, but not at the cost of preciou$ eggs. I hope they keep working on it!

 

[gpop1]

This thread is for owners of the Little Giant 9300 Incubator to compare the digital controls on there Little Giant 9300, It is not for discussing hatches, hatch results, bird types, ect .

My Little Giant 9300 arrived last week and It looked and worked great, up until I decided I should be running the temp at 100.5 for still air as my local extension office suggests. This is when I discovered what appears to be programming errors within the digital controller unit. The controller unit appears to be right on the money when it comes to reading temperature from it's sensor bulb. However the issue became apparent when setting a temperature other that 99.5 degrees. Since I have eggs in the incubator I am only will do my testing in a range that won't harm the eggs as I'd like them to hatch. We all know the 9300's Humidity meter doesn't read correctly, so we don't need to discuss that.

These are my results.

Setting heater(on) heater(0ff) Maintains
---------------------------------------------------------
99.5 99.5 100.0 99.5
100.0 99.0 99.5 99.5
100.5 99.5 100.0 100.0
101.0 100.0 100.5 101.5
101.5 100.5 101.0 101.0


It could be I just have a bad controller unit or maybe there's more to it than that.
Bottom line: The heater should not shutoff until the control unit display reads the set temperature and should go on below the set temperature.

Anybody else do any testing of their control unit and get these results ?

this could be a lot of things. The temp on the screen is probably not the temp being seen by the controller. No one wants to see the temp changing constantly so the temp is smoothed out before being displayed. The controller probably sees the temp hit set point and turns off the heater before the display is updated. Another reason could be that the heater is designed to shut down slightly below set point to stop a over run which is caused by heat being stored around the heater.
This may be why some people complain that they get a temp spike after opening the incubator.

The temp probes are normally really accurate and will report to the controller the temp it is seeing (plus or minus 0.2 degrees C or 0.5 F is a standard accuracy for most temp sensor).
Now the trick is to make a temp gauge that's measuring one tiny spot in the incubator work for the whole interior of the incubator. A fan running at low speed seems to help in most cases (12v fan running on a 6-8v plug in power supply) The slower blade speed mixs the air rather than blowing it around seems to have good results. this could also help the humidity gauge as that is temp compensated.