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Roasting lions

A project log for Personal air conditioning with MEMS

Your biggest ally during global warming.

lion-mclionheadlion mclionhead 06/26/2024 at 02:040 Comments

After 3 mild & humid years, the weather once again turned back to many consecutive triple digit days with very low humidity.  In these conditions, the swamp cooler has a notable effect when right near the outlet.  The overall room temperature only drops by 1F degree while the humidity rises 5%.  The swamp cooler saw its most use in a long time, with expected failures quickly following.

The 1st thing to go was the pump.  Another tube perished after a year.  Instead of drawing air in, it was letting water out.  It appeared as a small puddle & grew over the next day until the desk was a waterfall.  Expensive stuff got soaked.  Those are going to have to be preventatively replaced every year.

Then a transducer died.  Tried to revive it by unplugging it but forgot this causes the flyback transistors to overload.  The magic smoke came out & it was dead.  It wasn't the 1st fried board.

There's an inventory of spare electronicals because they tend to die randomly.  Got rid of the molex connectors so the transducers can't be unplugged.    This transducer might have gotten silicone grease in its intake.

Upgraded the feed stock to 1 gallon of tap water.  This lasts 12 hours.

The water level sensor managed to not have any issues so far.  In the interest of preserving the water level sensor, it would be best not to put any fragrance in the water, especially oil based. 

Noted the 1mm thick walls are not ideal.  They should really be 2mm thick on the sides.  It also needs a more permanent stand.  It could be a shelf that keeps it on top of the expensive stuff it soaked when the pump died.

Measured it at 6W when not running the pump.

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