project egg incubator

[glenn property of pam]

my wife decided to buy some quail for the aviary to clean up the seed that's spilt on the floor. She purchased a small plastic container with a 7watt light bulb for a incubator. The light is annoying in the house at night time while watching tv and theres no control to the light so its time for a overkill project that's basically a way to learn something new, spend more money than its worth and make something simple as complicated as possible.

so far I found a old 8 bottle wine cooler and I have reversed the cooling unit so I can het the inside of the cooler using the heat off the back of the peltier ceramic. I reversed the whole unit as the hot heat sink was larger than the cold rather than just reversing the voltage.

The next problem was the thermal controls on the wine cooler wouldn't allow a setting as high as 99.5 so I tried a adjustable industrial heat switch which worked but it was designed for 120v so I had to use a relay as im cutting power to the peltier not the control board. The switch would shut off at 99.5 but it would rattle the relay until the temp had over run slightly. The buzzing scared the wife as the relay rattled so that was a fail. (learn something: the theory works, The heater can reach temp, The cold side is not going to get real cold and cause condensation issues, the switch is not going to work, The heat sink has stored thermal energy which will cause overrun.

Upgraded switch to a digital rtd thermal control relay. This held the temp with in 1.4 degrees. After some research (read the manual) I allowed fussy logic on the relay which records the over and under run then adjusts the controller to shut down early and start early. Now the temp is held with in 0.4 degrees.

Next step is: Arduino controller so I can not only control temp but humidity, alarms, fans, egg turner, etc. I know a few people on here have played with this type of hardware so im sure when I get stuck I can ask for a hand

 

[glenn property of pam]

ordered a starter kit for the arduino and some plastic gears to make a egg roller as the wife doesn't want the tilt type egg turner. so im $80 in on something I could have bought premade for $120. Ive got a learning C for a arduino book and im finding it interesting as its helping me better under stand ladder logic controllers that I use everyday at work. Delivery is 2 weeks for the parts so I hope to at least understand the basics by then

 

[gm280]

Oh yea! This surely sounds like a lot of my projects. I can spend twice the cost to do something new and unique only to find out I could have purchased it for half the price built. But then I wouldn't have had to use my brain and think and learn either. Education is costly some times... :facepalm:

 

[Grandad]

my wife decided to buy some quail for the aviary to clean up the seed that's spilt on the floor. She purchased a small plastic container with a 7watt light bulb for a incubator.

It sounds like you two are birds of the same feather. Been there done that with projects before. It's fun to have projects that you learn from, even if you only learn you should have just reached for the broom or the vacuum. Keep us posted on how it works out for both of you. - Grandad

 

[roscoe]

Yeah.... have fun with the project. Been there, tried that.

I'm more interested in the type of quail, and what is in the aviary.

And often times you can purchase live quail chicks where ever you can get chickens.
So much cheaper in the long run, and easier, better mortality, etc.
If you're talking little buttons, etc, buy them live from a breeder.

 

[glenn property of pam]

Yeah.... have fun with the project. Been there, tried that.

I'm more interested in the type of quail, and what is in the aviary.

And often times you can purchase live quail chicks where ever you can get chickens.
So much cheaper in the long run, and easier, better mortality, etc.
If you're talking little buttons, etc, buy them live from a breeder.

I have to kinda agree and if I had found a button breeder in the area I might have gone that way. My wife has 2 aviary's one has cockatiels and the other is english budgies. we are not breeders, we just enjoy sitting on the deck and watching them We decided to get some quail as a experiment to clean up some of the spilt seed. My wife wanted the expensive ones with the crest but it seemed more prudent to start with the cheap ones first especially as we were starting with eggs. Now we could have got eating quail local but that's a whole lot of work for a such a little piece of meat.

As for the project I enjoy playing around. I don't have much backlog in the yard of boats or small engines and im to broke to start a real project like a buggy, car, boat at the moment so this is cheap learning experience and im hoping to get my daughter interested in the basics of code. I find that learn with out a reason difficult where learning with a goal is easy. Even if I just make a mess and end up trashing the idea as long as I have learnt what I did wrong then its all good.

At the moment im learning the basics of how to run a pwm signal to a mosfet then smooth out the square wave as the peltier is meant to hate square wave.

What ever happens this hopefully will not end up like project hovercraft or project learn how to fly a ultra-light as both of those tried to kill me.

 

[roscoe]

Cool, small bird aviaries are nice.
I used to have tiels, miss them, maybe in a year or two.
Wish we could do an outside aviary, but just too cold and wet 10 months out of the year.

 

[glenn property of pam]

Cool, small bird aviaries are nice.
I used to have tiels, miss them, maybe in a year or two.
Wish we could do an outside aviary, but just too cold and wet 10 months out of the year.

my wifes birds are outside In the aviary which I had to build as payment for being allowed to keep my birds in the house. I have 2 suns and 2 mustaches which are small parrots about the size of tiels in the house. I built a play gym that's about 2' by 8' with a rasied deck that can be removed in sections so I can replace the newspaper under the gym. It started with a bird that needed a home and that lead to it needing a friend....lol