Egg Incubator Design in Power-Saving Use for Small Scale Industries

Abstract

Egg incubation is a critical process in the poultry industry. It plays a vital role in the production of chicks for business including meat and egg production. Egg incubation has come a long way from the conventional approach of suing broody hens to the use of modern scientific approach of artificial egg incubation. Egg incubators are those devices which are designed to simulate the natural process of egg hatching by controlling the incubation parameters such as temperature, humidity etc. These machines can be used in industries as well as by hobbyists. In this paper, a power efficient low-cost chicken egg incubator was designed using a 100 W filament lamp, an ESP 32 microcontroller, DHT 11 temperature sensor and humidifier. IOT cloud integration was done to enable the monitoring of the incubation parameters through mobile devices such as temperature and humidity. Automatic egg tilting system throughout the incubation period was integrated to enhance the success rate of fertilization of eggs. A dead band control system was implemented to obtain optimum power and energy efficiency. The recommended temperature of 36–37-degree Celsius and humidity between 60-70 % was maintained during the incubation period. The 100 chicken eggs that were tested during the entire incubation period provided a hatching rate of 98%. 6 eggs out of 100 eggs were not fertilized properly and we were able to obtain 92 chickens out of 94 eggs from the purely fertilized eggs