Ladies and gentlemen, we can now declare: “NUL’s Robotic Egg Incubator, Pius the XII, is ready to hit the markets!” That is thanks to Electronic Engineers at the National University of Lesotho (NUL); Seforo Mohlalisi and Thabo Koetje!
In a nutshell, it controls temperature to the finest digits, it confines humidity to any required range, it turns the eggs by itself, it continually pumps water needed in the system during operations, it rings the alarm to warn you of dangerous conditions and, as a bonus, it keeps you on the loop about what’s going on; 24/7.
With a capacity to produce 600 chicks at a go and in a fully automated manner, you may as well agree with us—it is probably the most complex machine ever designed and made in Lesotho!
But listen to this. It launches tomorrow in a short ceremony at NUL!
NUL Engineers say that after developing and testing this incubator over three years, the varsity is now ready to negotiate with investors who are willing to commercialize it!
[For the upcoming NUL Science and Technology Conference, submit your abstract at www.nulistice.org.ls]
“This NUL funded machine is designed to be robotic—that is, it will do everything by itself!” Mr Koetje introduced the incubator enthusiastically. “We can easily argue that its features make it beat many of its competitors already in the market.”
“When you have it, yours is simple, you put the fertilized eggs in, and you rest—you will get your chicks after 21 days,” added Mr Seforo Mohlalisi.
The machine is dubbed Pius the XII Incubator. It is named after Lesotho’s Most Famous Chick, Pius the XII, hatched during its development..
Even in its grave, Pius still holds tight to the title.
“After Pius’ unfortunate death following a vicious attack by Roma dogs, the spirit behind Pius the XII was never lost,” Mohlalisi added.
Now, take a tour into what the machine will do for you!
We already know that it controls temperatures accurately. That is because instead of using a thermostat system, it measures incubator temperatures and controls the amount of electricity going into the heating element.
This puts it on its own league because it uses the modern principles of process control which are hard to master.
But then, it trashes other traditional incubators even further. Here is why.
In conventional incubators, you just put water in large bowls and HOPE that your humidity would be where you want it to be.
Not Pius the XII, it fixes humidity right to the selected range!
Hatching period needs much more humidity, thus most people would pull the eggs after 18 days of incubation to put them in separate hatchers for higher humidity and other relevant conditions.
However, Pius the XII Incubator becomes Pius the XII Hatcher in a split second. It will increase humidity levels to required ranges in a moment. To transform from incubator to hatcher, you do it with a press of a button!
That is it!
Then the egg-turning part. Rest assured; Pius the XII will turn the eggs every hour of the day, on its own, to maximize nutrition distribution.
And there are daily trips with traditional incubators—to refill water. You will recall that humidity is water in the air. To maintain humidity within the incubator, one needs to keep adding water into the bowls of most of the traditional incubators several times a day.
You miss this once and you find humidity levels fatally low!
“In our case, we have installed a mechanical means to bring just enough water into the incubator automatically from a large container or tank,” Mr Koetje said. “The flow of water matches the amount used for humidity, so there is no overfill!”
The incubator can also control the speeds of the fan inside. If temperatures happen to be too high, the fan speeds go on overdrive, to bring the temperature down before eggs are damaged.
Some parameters are shown on a display—here you can trace the humidity and temperature values. Also, green lights say the conditions are right and red lights say the conditions are too high.
Red for danger!
If, for instance, the temperature becomes alarmingly high, the machine triggers the alarm to alert the farmer.
In the end, all this work is carefully documented! Mr Mziwakhe Makhaya, Mechatronics student at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and a volunteer in this project documented the entire incubator using Solid Works software.
“I wanted to make sure that anyone can just pick up the generated drawings and easily make a replica during commercialisation,” he said.
The incubator is able to withstand high humidity conditions thanks to a wooden casing built by NUL's brilliant carpenter, Mr Lintle Mafa.
What an engineering marvel! Soon, you will never have to import meat anymore!