Pictured below is a timer we built to accompany a Poultry Egg Incubator Controller we made recently.

When incubating eggs it is very important to keep track of the time since they were laid since, for example, eggs must be turned regularly until the last few days before hatching, and for some eggs the temperature and humidity ranges need minor adjustments during the incubation period.

Our timer is 12VDC powered like the incubator, and has a display to show the elapsed time since it was last manually reset. The time is shown in days:hours:minutes:seconds format.

Since eggs take anything up to 6 weeks to hatch, the time elapsed is stored in memory on the timer microcontroller every 15 minutes so that if the power to the timer is cut for any reason (e.g. flat battery or accidental disconnection of one of the power leads), when the timer is reconnected to power, it will restart from within no more than 15 minutes of where it was before the power cut.

After incubation has finished, a reset button (Reset Button 1) must be pressed for 1 second to reset the timer to 0:00:00:00 ready for the next lots of eggs to go into the incubator.

This timer is built around an Arduino Pro Mini. The microcontroller with its on board crystal keeps time well enough for this application. (If more accuracy was required we would have added a real time clock (RTC).). Reset Button 2 on the timer resets the internal clock which is limited to 4,294,967,295 milliseconds (just under 50 days) – plenty of time for pretty much everything up to ostrich eggs, but not long enough for emperor penguin, albatross, and some cuckoo eggs. For exotic eggs with very long incubation periods, an RTC would need to be added.

If you need a timer or a poultry incubator controller, email neil@reuk.co.uk with details of your requirements.