Design and construction of smart solar powered egg incubator based on GSM/IoT

Abstract

Due to the low access rate of electricity in Africa and unreliable power supply in the grid. It is difficult for smallholder farmers that have incubators to use their egg incubators for reproduction, which constrains their businesses and imports day-old chicks from other continents. Farmers who have incubators face low productivity due to poor performance in their hatcheries that have human beings monitoring and controlling processes in incubation. Minimizing human contact in incubation can boost the income levels of smallholder farmers. Remote monitoring and control of the egg incubator parameters from a distant location may be cost-effective and efficient for bird reproduction in modern times. The abundant solar resources on the continent can eliminate the challenge of low access rates and unreliable power supply farmers face and guarantee income from hatcheries. The main objective of this paper is to design and construct an intelligent solar-powered egg incubator based on GSM/IoT that limits human contact in the incubation cycle to meet global protein needs. The paper seeks to build an innovative egg incubator whose supply is from a standalone photovoltaic system. After the physical product construction, several tests were conducted on the developed incubator to evaluate its performance. The recorded hatchability rates were 97.14%, 95.45%, 95.6%, and 95.24%.