I came across this little 4l Peltier fridge at the car bootie and couldn't resist it. I thought it would be ideal for making overnight bigas at 16C in the summer with a few mods.
Of course, like many things car boot, it didn't work! However it was an easy fix: the cooling fan for the hot-side heatsink wasn't turning because there was a bit of plastic stuck in the blades.
So, with the fridge working, time to add temperature control and cold air circulation. I fitted an NTC probe to feed back to my STC1000 style temperature controller and a 12v blower fan stuck to the roof of the fridge with double sided 3M tape to give air circulation.
I haven't used it in earnest yet, but my trial with a plastic tub of water looks promising - it was maintaining 16C accurately enough.
Lance
Great that you could nurse it back to health. Enjoy it!
Nice work. I have the same controller - I find it a little difficult to change the set temp, but otherwise , it works just fine for me.
Strange - I just press set, up or down, then set again.
I will have to remember to set C for cooling and H for heating in the HC menu item, depending what I'm controlling.
Lance
Have fun! Is the insulation good?
Yippee
I don't think it's great, maybe about 15mm sheet expanded polystyrene, but good enough and the fact that it's more or less a sealed enclosure helps.
Once it had run for a while, the chiller was probably on 60% of the time with sp 16C and RT 23C
Lance
has insulation issue, too. So I'm not surprised with a "toy" like this. But it's so cute that I totally understand why you would spend??? on it.
Yippee
very cool