Starting an Arduino DIY incubator project

[gpop1]

how about any small dc motor that's gear reduced and a few prox sensors or ir beam sensors (few bucks each for arduino) then turn the whole incubator like brimasea does.

 

[abqchicken]

That might be worth thinking about. I have the prox sensors. would need to figure out the gearing. Not sure where to buy the gears. I have a few Helicopter motors that should be strong enough.

 

[gpop1]

knex (kids toy) has some carousel gears that are about 5" in diameter and maybe a piece of 4 inch pvc drain pipe would be big enough to make a incubator (its can be bent and modeled if heated).

 

[abqchicken]

Update on the relay - without the 110V switching, the relay I picked initially (show in picture) worked fine. Once I plugged in the 110V with the light to use as a heat source, my LCD kept browning out (display goes blank). After a little research I found that the relay will 1) use too much power, 2) inject noise back into the Arduino leading to the brown-out. To solve this, I lucked out and had another relay that is opto-isolated and allows me to power the relay separately. I rigged up an old 5V cell phone charger and the problem seems to be gone!.

 

[abqchicken]

This is the outside of the beast. I just used a cheap container and lined it with insulation. On the left I made a small hole to be able to peek in.

 

[abqchicken]

This is the inside. You can see the insulation. In the lower middle you can see the temperature and humidity gauge. The black thing on the lower right is the computer fan (it is right next to a vent hole. The 50W reptile heat lamp is obviously the glowing red thing. I also put in a container with water and two rocks. I found that putting in the rocks gives me some heat capacity to keep the system from cooling too fast and it also helps with the humidity.

 

[SolarChickens]

This is really neat, i've been wanting to do something similar, I'd like to have something that squeezes a water mist bottle to give a bump in humidity when needed rather than rely on evaporation alone.

 

[abqchicken]

you could use a very small cool mist humidifier and a relay to turn it on and off. The one thing that is challenging is the lag in sensing. The sensor I have takes around 2 seconds to update and that can be a long time in a small space like in my incubator.

 

[gpop1]

you could use a very small cool mist humidifier and a relay to turn it on and off. The one thing that is challenging is the lag in sensing. The sensor I have takes around 2 seconds to update and that can be a long time in a small space like in my incubator.

Shouldn't be a problem to program the mister to run for a short burst then wait 3-5 minutes to check the humidity before deciding if it needs to run again. I use a separate chamber that holds water and when the humidity drops then air is sent via the chamber to pick up moisture and that works real well with the dht22 sensor. I am building another one at the moment and im tempted to try the usb 5v mister as ive heard they work (reliability is a little hit and miss but they are cheap)

 

[abqchicken]

The mini humidifier should work well. I just saw some that screw on to the top of a water bottle and powered by USB. Could probably just put the water bottle in without the chamber to simplify The chamber would get rid of the potential of water dropplets.