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So far I only have the prototype for the cold box and already it's a bust. It's moot at the moment because where the box is, the temperature rarely goes above 40 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a good temperature for my bevies, but obviously it needs to be that on the inside when the room is 115 degrees. The reason it's a bust is that the peltier unit is only drawing the air temperature inside the box down 5 degrees. The setup is simple so far as you can see by the picture. It's just an arduino to control the fans, a cooler for the body, a thermometer with a probe outside and inside the box, a battery for the arduino, a cpu cooler, and a heat-sink inside. The peltier is powered by one of my solar panels. The panels can deliver about 18 volts at 3.5 amps, but spends its time more like 18 volts at 2 amps. That's not really to my liking, but I didn't get all of my panels built this summer, so I'm short on power at the moment.
When the arduino is on it powers the relay which turns the fans (one inside and one on the cpu chiller outside) on and off. They aren't needed at the moment, because it's so cold in the room. I do run them sometimes to try to make a difference in the temperature, but so far no good. It is interesting to me that the heat-sink inside gets quite cold, but that it doesn't translate to the air temperature. Like I said it drops the air temperature only 5 degrees.
So what's next? I need to get more power somehow. I need to figure out why the peltier isn't doing what people claim it's supposed to. That's one of the problems with people online, they copy each other endlessly and it's hard to know if they are being honest or not. Even if they have done their own work or not. I'd like to try to get a frame built so that it can move and then put a battery on it. I'm thinking that it will need to have two batteries; one for mobility and life support and another just to run the box. I'll just have to see what I can manage next. It's early in the game and there is a lot of work to do on it.
