Did you miss the award-winning documentary "Robots Rising" the first time? A very good documentary on the present state of robotics, including a few clips of our own Mr. Tilden. Worth investigating (Airing April 11 to 19). Read More...
Here's a little makeover of an inexpensive aftermarket car seat heating pad that stopped working.
Designed to activate and warm up when sat upon, the electronics face a fair amount of abuse: since the seat is a soft frame, the wires inside constantly move and flex with the body. They are also subject to harsh temperature changes with frequent (very) cold weather heating and cooling cycles, adding to a situation ripe for a malfunction, which happened to one of our staff when he couldn't warm up his tush one cold Canadian morning...
Dragging it into the lab, we peeled back the covers to discover the usual and not-so-usual suspects.
The old wires had a PVC jacket that had dried out and cracked.
The wires would then flex at these cracks and break:
We replaced those wires with our GroovyNoodle silicone wire, which is able to resist flexing and temperature fluctuations very well.
Here's a picture of the sketchy activation switch we found inside the bottom part of the seat. It's designed to close when under "bum load", and directly pass power to the heating coils. We're not experts at auto-grade accessory manufacturing, but we were surprised that it wasn't a logic "bum-detected" switch that triggered a suitable relay or FET elsewhere. And the lack of a thermal reset fuse surprised us.
All broken wires replaced! Almost all the PVC jacket wire had cracked and disintegrated, so we replaced it with our better-quality GroovyNoodle silicone wire. This wire is extremely flexible, high strand count, and a temperature-ignoring silicon jacket. Perfect for inside this car seat heater.
All necessary repairs and upgrades were done just in time for the next stretch of (very much) cold Canadian winter.
Did you miss the award-winning documentary "Robots Rising" the first time? A very good documentary on the present state of robotics, including a few clips of our own Mr. Tilden. Worth investigating (Airing April 11 to 19). Read More...
Solarbotics held a few workshops and lectures at the MAKEr faire April 22/23rd. After giving a workshop, a nice man from Microsoft invited me over to see their BEAM robots. Obviously intregued, I found their display at the Microsoft pavilion where Microsoft encouraged all their engineers with "MAKE"-style hobbies to exhibit, including this squad of […]
This is just a subtle reminder that Solarbotics & HVW Technologies will both be closed January 1st and 2nd (Thursday and Friday), while we're out fighting raging hangovers being productive members of society. We hope 2008 treated all of you well and that 2009 will be even better. And if it isn't, well... Once we […]
Howdy folks! We just wanted to let you know that our office will be closed for the Holiday Monday, May 22. All orders submitted over the weekend will be filled first thing on Tuesday, May 23. Happy May Long Weekend!
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Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.