The $71 Portable Incubator

Every biohacker or home hobbyist has run into this problem - how to keep your mammalian cells alive as you transport them from lab to lab. Or how to keep them warm, without paying hundreds for an incubator on Ebay.com.

Here is a cheap solution.

Buy a cheap picnic cooler. I got this one for $5 in a thrift store and bleached it really well. I sprayed it with bleach in a bottle and that didn’t work. I literally had to lay a blanket on top and soak it with bleach overnight to get all of the dirt off. This part is critical because a dirty incubator could cause contamination issues and haunt you forever. Do not stint on this step. But it turned out ok:

Then I drilled a hole in top so I could install a meat thermometer, so I could read the internal temperature without opening it up. And hot glued the wires and the meter in place. To change the batteries, I will have to redo the hot glue. But it was a quick and dirty solution that works really well. (An external thermometer is option, but if you have one, you don’t have to open it up, to know that things are okay, so you risk less contamination, and it’s just really convenient)

Ok, I got that top thermoprobe very cheap at the thrift shop, but I think you’d pay about $10 for one on Amazon:

Inside, I drilled a hole in the side, and I hot glued a 110V wire, so I could easily plug it in. (white) I got that for $1 at the flea market, but maybe you’ll pay $5 retail.

Now put in a thermostat-regulated plant sprouter mat, set to 99F.

A standard heat pad for sprouting plants has a thermostat, with a thermal probe. So if the probe is well placed, it will keep your cells at a good 99F temperature. (I got this idea from the-odin.com) You can buy this pretty much anywhere, but on Amazon they are about $20. Be sure the one you purchase will measure around body temperature for mammal cell work. If you are doing bacteria only work, you can get lower. For flexibility, make sure that yours has a wide range. You need to think about this part, or you could buy one that doesn’t work for your needs.

My heating pad was about $20:

Put the probe, for the mat heater, and the external thermometer, underneath the mat, between it and the cooler wall. If it has a suction cup, use that. Otherwise, maybe you should hot glue it into place. Find the sweet spot before making it permanent.

This is all that you need to have an incubator. Mine holds a really solid 99F, so I’m happy with it.

But, you will likely need to transport stuff, so you should invest in a dc to ac inverter for your car. Plug this into your cigarette lighter, and you will have portability.

05.00 cheap cooler
10.00 top external thermoprobe
05.00 white extension cord, which you will cut and ruin and hot glue into place.
01. 00 wire nuts to reattach halves of the white extension cord.
20.00 heating pad from Amazon, with built-in thermostat
30.00 Power inverter for car
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71.00 Total

Now you have a cheap incubator, and you can do bacteria cultures, or mammal cells using L15 media. If you want to use DMEM then you need to add CO2, and that is another story. (stay tuned)

Or you could just buy one on Ebay for $121.50. (but these tend not to be portable, and frankly my homemade job holds a more steady temperature than my ebay model.)