We are closed on Monday, July 2nd in lieu of Canada Day this Sunday (July 1st)! We will be back in business July 3rd. Also, to all our US customers: shipping will be delayed on July 4th.
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.
We are closed on Monday, July 2nd in lieu of Canada Day this Sunday (July 1st)! We will be back in business July 3rd. Also, to all our US customers: shipping will be delayed on July 4th.
Finally got them through the Pick and Place machine, tested, and ready to go. Check out the blue and green versions! (We're still kicking around a VU-type Greeeeen/Yel/RED version too. What do you think?) By the way, we've got some pretty decent sample code on how to use your Ardweeny Backpack (and thusly, any Arduino-compatible) […]
Meteor showers! This week! Everybody watch! And other than that, watch the links. They are shiny too and they come out at night and eat all your strawberry pie and pencils… Er, no, they don’t, actually. But they will only shine the light of their internet goodness on you: My open-source, do-it-yourself cellphone (built with […]
As we all know, the 'A' in 'August' stands for 'Arduino'. So it's with great sorrow that this will be our last mega Arduino-centric update. We'll still be adding to our selection, but not in as massive amounts. The Arduino Components category is still rather sparse, so hopefully that'll see some love soon. But in […]
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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.