The Western Canadian Robot Games are fast approaching, so we're going to help spur on building by reducing the prices of our batteries by half! Get building - you only have less than 2 months to finish!
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.
The Western Canadian Robot Games are fast approaching, so we're going to help spur on building by reducing the prices of our batteries by half! Get building - you only have less than 2 months to finish!
Well, it's the end of the year apparently. 2011 has kinda withered up and died like some kinda... Food thing that tends to dry up if you leave it out for too long. Like jerky. Or raisins. Mm, especially raisins when they're in oatmeal cookies (shh, don't tell the boss. Anything but a strict chocolate […]
Today August 21, 2017, we were treated to about 80% solar eclipse. In spite of the smoke, the weather cooperated so we couldn't miss this event. Pinhole projector boxes were made out of cereal and shipping boxes: Fancy ones were mounted onto a tripod, and a phone camera recording a time lapse video was taped to […]
Another Friday has arrived, and with it we have some new mounting hardware and buttons to look at: Pololu Mini Plastic Gearmotor bracket Pair - Wide $3.25 Affix our GM6 and GM7 motors to any project with these plastic motor brackets. Pololu Mini Plastic Gearmotor bracket Pair - Tall $3.25 Affix our GM6 and GM7 […]
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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.