brunnhilde's refrigerator control - part 8

 

Living within my means is always the motto. If you have very little battery bank reserve you just find ways to reduce power consumption. That is why Brunnhilde have no power hungry appliances. The roof top air conditioner does not count as it requires shore power or the generator to supply its power, and during use, any other power consumers are insignificant in comparison. Now with the refrigerator, water boiler, or the diesel furnace. They need to consume as little current from the house battery bank as possible.

brunnhilde's refrigerator control - part 7

I decided to forge ahead and cross the Rubicon, that is modifying the Black Water (as dirty as the Black Water Iraq war badass covert contractor) level indicator panel and repurpose it for the refrigerator control panel. As it turns out there are many constraints on where I can cut the opening for the Ink Bird. There are the existing graphics that I want to obscure and preserve. I have to comprehend the cabinet opening which turns out to be not symmetrical WRT to the faceplate. It is offset to one long side.

brunnhilde's refrigerator control - part 6

 

I thought I would spend a little more time looking closer in repurposing the black water level indicator faceplate for he refrigerator thermostat. My goal is to make the hack look factory without showing any sign this is a hack.

brunnhilde's refrigerator control - part 5

 

I have a setback in my desire to add a display blanking feature to the Ink Bird temperature controller. When I formulated the idea, I didn't give much thought of the complexity of the segmented LED display. While I was right to expect it being a dumb segmented display, I didn't give much thought to the number of segments this purpose made display has, and the number of pins that requires to support them. A rough count I found 34 segments to be switched on/off. Yet there are only 13 pins on the package.

brunnhilde's refrigerator control - part 4

In my haste to get the bench testing started, I didn't pay attention to the optimum location of the thermistor. I mistaken the evaporator expansion port as the factory thermistor. I would soon notice the frequent cycling. For resistive heating short cycling is not a problem due to conservation of energy, but not the case with compressor refrigeration.

brunnhilde's refrigerator control - part 3

 

The prospect to have a dedicated digital thermostat for the refrigerator and able to see the cold plate temperature (of the thermistor) got me excited with this little project. If done right it costs so little and I have fun along the way. I like little electronic projects like this that enhances the existing design, while being challenged to maintain the aesthetics and integrity of Westfalia's design spirit.

brunnhilde's refrigerator control - part 2

Between time and monetary critical projects I put in some time towards this fun project. I open up the cabinet under the refrigerator to take some photos of the wiring and components to plan my bench test with the digital temperature controller.

brunnhilde's refrigerator control - part 1

I am warming up to the idea of taking away the refrigerator's control from Brunnhilde's Central Display Console. There is another wrong with it. The biggest motivator for me is to be able to read off the actual temperature inside without needing a improvised digital thermometer like I am using now. This home brewed refrigerator controller, if carefully and thoughtfully designed and implemented, will add a nice touch to ergonomics and aesthetics. 

brunnhilde's ventilation fan - part 1

A few years ago I designed this 200mm thermostatically operated ventilation fan in Isolde. I have been wanting to install a similar fan in Brunnhilde's bathroom skylight, but hoping to find a fan with slightly more CFM.

brunnhilde's digital thermostat - part 6

 

It has been quite a journey since when I decided to tackle the Honda EU2000i generator's inability to reliably power the 9200 BTU Coleman Mach 8 Polar Cub roof top air conditioner. My determination and self-reliance paid off and I can now declare victory.

mega winch for the car trailer - part 2

 The ATV winch includes a harness that has a hardwire control 3 position rocker switch that is momentary, In-off-Out. It is set up for mounting onto the tubular handle bar of a ATV. I made a adapter bracket so it can be mounted at a convenient location on the trailer.

brunnhilde's digital thermostat - part 5

The 110Vac version of the temperature controller took a long time to arrive, because Amazon bundled a few of my other orders into one shipment to save shipping cost. I was full of anticipation not knowing if the algorithm in the AC version would be the same as the 12Vdc one that I blew up. This one is actually an older design and not branded as Ink Bird. I chose this unknown brand to save over 18%!

mega winch for the car trailer - part 1

Emboldened by the success of utilizing Brunnhilde's starting battery to power the winch on the car trailer, we want more. The low cost China made 2000 lb Warn winch has such a hard time winching a car up the incline. I have been wary the motor may burn out so I carry a manual winch just in case.

brunnhilde's digital thermostat - part 4

 

I was going to wait until the replacement Ink Bird temperature controller arrives before removing the Kerstner control panel to transfer the four mounting hole locations over to my custom faceplate, in case I need to use the air conditioner.

brunnhilde's digital thermostat - part 3

 

Hand cutting a piece of 0.063" sheet aluminum to fabricate the faceplate by hands for the air conditioner was not something I look forward to do. I have done similar fabrication many times before but each successive iteration I grew less enthusiastic due to the grunt work it entails. Drilling round holes are easy, but not so with square or rectangle ones. And not having a proper sheer squaring all four sides is tedious and laborious iterative hand filing.

brunnhilde's digital thermostat - part 2

While waiting the transit of the Ink Bird temperature controller I spend some time fabricating the custom faceplate to take the place of the Kerstner air conditioner control panel. I cannot shoehorn the Ink Bird into the Kerstner control panel as there is simply not enough space for it.

brunnhilde's digital thermostat

I have been dissatisfied with the air conditioner's mechanical thermostat. Its temperature range does not allow one to keep a warmer cabin temperature so the air conditioner when used making the cabin temperature too low. Due to the small cabin space and you cannot escape from the high velocity of the frigid air streams. I tried tuning the thermostat to no avail. Time to do something about it. 

well pump not well

 

I have been noticing that the well pump at the ranch at times would continue to run after the target pressure set point has been reached. The pressure gauge has been getting more and more sluggish over the course of my brief ownership of this property. I had bought a replacement well pump pressure switch in the event the switch should fail.

ink bird temperature controller mystery - part 2

 

When I decided to write about the controller and title it a mystery because I had reservation of what was represented on the product page. It is one of those thing that taxes your ability to process ambiguous and conflicting information.

brunnhilde said no to trailer winch battery - part 5

 

I continued the work to get the trailer winch power supply project wrapped up, by routing the much more flexible 10 AWG wire pair down to the trailer hitch, and finished with an Anderson connector.