The two questions that I get asked the most about my Shuttlecock Humidifer are:

  1. Does it work?
  2. How long does it take to work?

To answer these two questions, I've set up a pseudo-experiment to measure the humidity of 4 tubes of shuttlecocks:

  1. Control - No humidity device / modifications
  2. Steaming - Steamed a tube of birds for ~1min (cold mist)*
  3. Spray Bottle + Humidifier - Sprayed shuttlecocks with a small spray bottles (4 squirts) + Humidifer*
  4. Humidifer Only - Installed humidifer as per Instructions*

#2-3 All had one shuttlecock removed from the tube

To measure the humidity of each tube, I used 4 x Xiaomi Aqara Temperature and Humidity Sensor

humidity_test-1

Below are the current and ongoing results - to be updated as more time passes:

Humidity Graph

Early Results

  • The steaming started out strong, but quickly declined
  • Using just the humidifer with no pre steaming/added water shows a slow but steady increase in humidity levels

Details and Caveats

  • Each tube was brand new and unopened from the same batch - Yumeng No. 1
  • Each tube was sitting in the same room for 2 days prior to experiment, except for the control tube, which was in a different cabinet
  • The humidity devices were calibrated the best they could, but there is about 100-200bps difference between them. However, this shouldn't matter, because we just want to see the trend of what's happening with the RH%
  • The temperature of the room fluctuates throughout the day, as does RH%. This should be captured in the Control tube
  • Between 4-27 1900 to 4-28 0100, the software capturing the RH% was off. You can see a straight line between those points
  • The room the tubes are sitting in is where we dry our laundry. The wet clothes has created a steady increase in humidity of the room and the control

Conclusions/Suggestions

  • Humidifier requires ~1 week before it's probably effective
    • Probably want to target a 60% humidity level for optimal performance
  • To get the humidty level up faster, steam/spray the birds, then add the humifier to maintain the humidity level
  • Tubes which shuttlecocks are stored in are not very good at maintaining RH. When the Air Conditioning turned on on Apr-29 ~2300, you can see a quick drop in RH.
  • I'll do the test again in the winter when the air is dry and cold

Useful links from previous post regarding RH%