School product at the end of a year

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi,
I am a 18y old student in the last year of school. At the end of a school year, we have to make something. A device, a project or measurements of electric instalations or something like that.

I have decided I will make an egg incubator because I have made one 2 years ago. (Psst I couldnt do it alone so I have asked for a lot of help on the forum :grin:).

Now I want to build a better version of it. I dont remember details :sweat_smile: but I have used a heater from 3d printer. I have drilled a hole in an old intel cpu cooler and inserted a heater into it so i had better heat dispension.

For temperature regulation I have used a PID loop and pwm module to controll the heater, and I think it was NTC thermometer.

For humidity controll, I have used dht22 to read humidity and servo to open a hatch to get more/less air into the incubator. (This servo hatch wasnt the best idea because servo motor burned out on the 19 of 21 days of incubation and the incubator broke down).

I had some fans inside it for air flow but I had a very very hard time to maintain a constant temperature. Incubator was a wooden spruce box with 2cm thick walls. The temperature at the top and at the middle was 40°C which is to high and at some other parts it was around 35°C...

At the bottom I had a plate with water inside it for humidity.

Oh and I almoast forgot, I also had pipes for egg rotation every few hours.

Everything was displayed in lcd 16x2. Humidity, temperature icons if heater is on, if eggs are rotating... and time to next rotation. I also had a rotary encoder to enter the menu and controll temperature, humidity, egg rotation interval...

The incubator had a window on top, so I added led strip inside with switch on top to turn it on/off.

Since I was in first/second year in the high school, I didnt know much about arduino. At first I have made an easy code but when I was doing it I wanted to add a menu etc... but i didnt know how to do it so probably 80% of the code at first (mostly the menu and inserting my parts of the codes), was made by someone from this forum. I had ideas and codes but I didnt know how to insert them in the menu.. after that all changes (there was quite a lot of them) I made myself without any help.

So at the end I actually understood what this code was and how it was working, because it is about 2000 lines long.

Then testing time came.

After a couple of not the best hatchings, 12 chickens hatched. They are now big and happy hens and a rooster :hugs:.

So after that, I had couple of smaller arduino projects. So my knowleage isnt what it was at the end of my very first egg incubator project.

Everything was based on arduino uno r3 (a fake one), lcd 16x2 and rotary encoder. If I remember correctly all the pins were used and about 50% of memory. (At the beggining arduino froze out a couple of times and after I replaced relays with pwm modules it got better but sometimes it still freezed and ruined my incubating process).

So now I would like to do this project again but a bit better one. I dont really intend to use it to hatch chickens anymore because I believe that the nature can do it in the best natural way possible, but a project is a project!

I saw that there is a arduino giga and touchscreen for it. Now I would like to use an original arduino, because I believe that it will work better.
Hmm, a touch screen means that I will need a new menu :thinking:. New menu means new code. I like the pid regulation.
I have used appx. 5 different temperature sensors. I think that this NTC worked the best but maybe a better one would be a great improvement.
And humidity sensor sucks, at least I think so.. so no more DHT 22. I will probably add a better humidity control, or maybe not :joy:.
I will also improve egg rotating system. Now I had pipes on gears and eggs on top of the pipes...

If I will use a touchscreen, maybe a switch for light inside the incubator on the touchscreen would be a great addition.
And maybe a wifi module.

And this is totally electric think, non arduino based but I will add a light on top so you can put an egg on top and see if there is a chicken inside of egg.

So do you think it is worth going from uno and lcd to giga and touchscreen?

If not, I would at least buy a bigger arduino so that I am not limited with pins on it...

How hard will it be to program the touchscreen?

I also need to make a new menu for the incubator if I use a touchscreen and I really dont have much experience in this field.

I have about 5 months to complete my project.

I know that I can not do it completly by myself because I dont have enaugh knowleade, so I will appriciate your help.

What would you advise me to do? I really apriciate your oppinion and advice.

Thanks!

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4

I have never used a Giga and I'm not sure that a touchscreen is really the upgrade you're after, if the simple user interface of before was doing the job well.

I'd be thinking more about a device in the Arduino Cloud as the shift toward IoT has driven a lot of products and seems to be more future-forward than a mere touchscreen.

Nice to see someone not asking for help the weekend before the dure date, by the way. Five months sounds about right for a project like this, to really upgrade from where you were, complete with testing.

Great job last time around, by the way! Those are some healthy looking chickens!

5

Did you remember to myServo.detach(); when you weren't using it? A high quality servo should have no issues with your project. Look at what the 1/10 or even 1/5 RC truck world has for something with metal gears and better quality. Savox and similar brands are worth the extra money, imo.

6

Nice.

You know these fora never forget and can be searched, try

@lziga55 egg

a7

7

If you do not want the wifi, you can use an Arduino Mega with a Nextion screen. The Mega will give you lots of IO, and a hardware serial port for connection to the Nextion. The Nextion is pretty easy to program.

8

For humidity control you could use the Si7021 temperature and humidity sensor. Its more accurate than the DHT ones.

With regards to the display, do you mean the Giga display shield? That's quite a costly option when you could use something like an ILI9341 and the TFT_eSPI library by Bodmer:

Obviously depends on your budget and the choice is yours. The Pi Pico is also a 3.3V board and has more pins that than the Uno. The Pico W also has WiFi or you could opt for an ESP32. Depends on how many pins you need.

The ability to remote monitor via the Cloud as proposed by hallowe31 sounds like a great idea. Did your original project have any logging of the temperature and humidity, or alerting if the temperature fell below a certain threshold?

9

  • If the OP fully understands the code in your link, they should easily be able to rewrite the sketch to new requirements.

  • If the OP doesn't understand the code they were provided with, it might be time to select a different field to study.

  • Suggest the OP not use a touch display, maybe use an OLED display, still have switches for menu control.

10

So I dont exactly remember what happened but sometimes servo started vibrating.. probably this was the reason for faliure. I actually dont think that I need a hatch for air.. if hole is small enaugh there shouldnt be any problems.. I have to think about it but thanks a lot!

11

So maybe I was a bit too fast. I didnt even look what kind of displays exist. I just saw the one... and yes, I said giga just because i saw the screen. Otherwise I was thinking about mega or something like that.

Do you agree that I should buy an original arduino?

12

So actually I have to look what display should I use because this giga shield or how is it called is pretty expensive yes :smile:.

But as oleds were mentioned, all displays I have found were very small. I will look into it.

And if you have any more ideas what should I add please tell me.

This time, I believe that I will be more independent!

Thanks

13

Thanks, I will look into it.

I believe that it is good but I am scared that I wont know how exactly to use it :slight_smile:

I started working on that after chickens hatched but I never finished.

14

Yes. It helps support the ecosystem.

15

Ok, I will.
Otherwise are originals better than cheap fakes?
Are the components better on originals? I mean from your experience?

I am asking just out of curiosity. I will buy an original, because I had enough problems with fake ones :upside_down_face:.

16

In my experience, yes. I have bought a knock off dud before. Some knock off brands are probably better than others. I have also bought official "non Arduino" boards that just don't hit the same. Run hot, pins all over the place, not the same user experience.

If you're not going online with it, Arduino Mega. If you are going online, Uno R4 (but not as many pins as you may like, and not exactly a direct drop in replacement for the Uno R3.

If you're looking to add a lot of features, the Mega is great since its extra hardware UARTs make offloading other tasks to other, accessory boards very easy. I have found it useful to do this when your sketch starts to get in the way of itself and you find yourself coding your masterpiece but getting lost as you go.

17

Take look here ....T-HMI – LILYGO®

18

Thanks!

Now a question. If I understand correctly, if I use this "led" display, do I have to just change from lcd to led display so only how something is shown (other library...) or do I acually have to create new menu. (Case, break case, switch and encoder movement through menu, which is counting every rotation +1 or -1 for moving through the menu).
I am asking this because I dont know how exactly do you program this :rofl:advanced displays​:rofl:.

Dont worry, I will add part of a code for example later :hugs:

Thanks and please dont be angry because I am asking samo stupid things without code example.

19

@lziga55 Project Guidance is one of the few categories here where no one should give you grief for a lack of code - presumably, you're posing questions here before actually starting your project, otherwise it would just be Project Help. So ask away - we hope the guidance you get will reduce the number of 'stupid questions' in the future!

20

These HMI units take a little work to understand the idiosyncrasies of the esp32 , but utilizing Bodmers TFT_eSPI & TFT_eWidget libraries you can set up a system with more capabilities than the current system. They look great and has the advantage of having WiFi and Bluetooth to allow remote control/monitoring and touch screen also (you could do away with the encoder , if desired).
Post your code as it is now , nice project and time is on your side ! It also has micro_SD slot for data logging (if you really want to advance the system at a later date !).
I could have a fiddle to the code to give some ideas. :wink:
ps: :saluting_face:
Only the answers MAY be stupid......NOT the question !