Another msg from our Italian contacts: Sumovores do well at the Pisa! Here's a Google-translated link.
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.
Another msg from our Italian contacts: Sumovores do well at the Pisa! Here's a Google-translated link.
Hi all. The staff at Solarbotics/HVW Technologies has been worked hard these last six weeks leading up to the winter holiday, so we'll be open again December 27/28, and again for regular hours January 2nd. Hope the holidays are good to you too! Regards, Dave Hrynkiw President, HVW Technologies/Solarbotics Ltd.
Remember the other week when we mentioned how the Arduino Parts category was looking rather thin? Well, we've gone ahead and fattened it up a bit with the following new items: 16MHz Through-Hole Crystal for Arduino Ardubot Bare PCB Barrel Power Jack 2.1mm Connection You might be wondering what the heck does a power jack […]
Every once in a while we like to re-arrange the furniture. Sure, it's nice to have things look new and different, but most of the time we're just trying to make things just work better. This week we've done a little bit of restructuring of our Advanced category - we hope it'll make it easier […]
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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.