ITP Project

Development of smart incubator (2nd year ITP project )

The final product of this project consists of an automated hardware unit of an egg incubator and a working IOT application program. Hard ware unit was automated and programmed C ++ and the IOT part was developed using PHP programming. Ardiuno  AtMega 2560 microcontroller and two NodeMCU development boards with ESP8266 microcontrollers which can connect to internet via a wifi hotspot.mega board was used to automate and manage the hardware unit.







Smart incubator

The hard ware unit of the incubator consist of sensors , a camera, a light and also an egg tray (which is programmed to rotate slowly).it also consisted of units to control the moisture and temperature. this incubator has the capacity to incubate 48 eggs at a time.


All the conditions necessary to incubate the eggs are provide and constantly monitored for changes with the sensors and the camera used.

This product was designed in such a way so that a special training was not required when using it.
Further the owner can start end and abort a session of incubation both manually from the touch pad and the display fixed to the hard ware unit and also via the IOT application developed via internet. The temperature, humidity and egg rotation is controlled by the sensors, relays, a heater, a fan, a mist maker and a motor. It ensures the IOT (Internet of Things) services by connecting to internet via WiFi with several ESP8266
micro controllers and transferring the data in the format of a with carefully designed datagram. The the system has an intermediate cloud service called “Thingspeak” to handle data among the hardware unit and the web application.

Hence the owner need not necessarily be near the hard ware unit when a new session needs to be started or to end an already started session.

Further there are pre defined templates (these consists of s pre defined value set of temperature and other conditions that are needed by a specific type of eggs  eg-turkeys  or parrot eggs for pet shops).these templates  can be further customized by the owner to develop a new template as well.

Starting a session from IOT application

The owner can start a session via the developed IOT application  by simply selecting new session and  setting a template. these data are passed on to the things speak cloud. This will transfer the data to the ardiuno board via a customized data gram. A wifi chip was used to manage the data transferring to and from  the things speak cloud  and the ardiuno board.

Starting a session manually from the hard ware unit

The owner can start a session manually from the hardware unit by pressing the keys in the touch pad fixed to the hard ware unit.any pre defined templates or a customized template can be selected and a new sessioncan be started.

How it works

When a session is  started manually or via the application, all the sensors ,the condition controllers and the camera are powered  and the machine starts a new session of maintaining a selected  condition set for a particular number of days .during this time period ,the eggs inside the incubator are periodically monitored and any unusual motion is detected from the motion sensor and reported to the owner. the owner can end or abort any session that was previously started.

This project was successfully completed by the  following team members 

Ra nawake P I

Gunarathne A U R H

 Devinda G R V

 Galagedara L N

Kalinga B G

 Silva K H A D