Another problem we needed to solve was how to count redclaw eggs.  As a supplier of eggs of improved genetics to other redclaw hatcheries we needed to accurately count them.

All the commercial software didn’t really do what we needed, were too expensive and not as accurate as we needed. Redclaw eggs can have a wide range of colours, sizes and textures. Commercial counting software continually needed adjusting and tuning to get accurate counts.

So again, enter a Raspberry Pi computer, connect it to a little camera, an illuminated table and some home developed python and C codes and you have your own egg counter. We can get around 99% accuracy and are determined to improve on this result.

Once our incubators are stocked, we can systematically take photos of eggs from each basket and store it for later processing. Once photos of all eggs have been taken, an algorithm (improved by our son Nicolas) is started that goes through each photo, processes the image, counts and totals. Each day as we remove unviable eggs, we can photograph these too.  They are counted and used for our statistics.

Apart from using it as a commercial tool to calculate egg totals we have began using this to understand breeding cycles, egg development, production quantities and mortalities. We hope to publish some of our findings soon.