Parallax is already sold out of the successor to the Scribbler. We have some still!
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.
Parallax is already sold out of the successor to the Scribbler. We have some still!
Alriiiiight. We've teased at it off and on for the past little while, but it's official - Solarbotics now carries sensors! Right now we've just added a big fist-full of distance / proximity sensors (17 items in total!), and a couple accessories. Stay tuned - we'll be adding more to these categories as well as […]
So, like, it's that magical time of year where we of Albertaville, Canada get a long weekend. We don't even have a reason anymore. We just figure that we ought to have one, so we come up with a name that sounds semi-official and run with it. "Quick, we need to figure out what to […]
Hi all. For all you Sumovore-owners, just a note to let you know that the new Atmel-WinAVR code is online (Atmel brainboard page under resources). Just some tweaks to make it compatible with the latest versions of WinAVR. Also, Dan Peirce has ported the JAL portion of the '877 brains to the Hi-Tech PICCLite compiler, […]
Solarbotics, Ltd. is not responsible for misprints or errors on product prices or information. For more information, please see our Terms and Conditions.
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.