Heated Gloves Control Box/PWN Circuit

[SANGER_A2]

Last year I had Roxter heated grips on my Fazer, but they looked crap and didn't work very well. They mainly heated up the underside of my hands while the outside got cold from the wind. When my winter gloves fell to bits after a couple of years use I bought some sexy EXO2 Stormshield heated gloves from my local Infinity motorcycle bits shop. They cost me £125 (and I earned Infinity points from it) - which was four times the price of my old winter gloves, but I think it's definitely worth it. They are really high quality and come with a years warranty.

The gloves don't draw a lot of power - especially compared to my old heated gloves, but they work much more effectively as they heat my hands not the bars and the heat sits in between my skin and the majority of the cold wind-blast. I needed a way to adjust the power and turn them off whenever I needed to. I decided that a PWM circuit was the most efficient way to adjust the power going to them as there is pretty much no wastage of power. I also wanted to be able to switch them on and off quickly and switch between full power and the PWM. The circuit I built can do all that, just looks kinda ugly!

I got loads of brilliant help and advice on how to build it here (Another Circuit Diagram for Checking). And it's thanks to Cloggy's advice that I used a PWM at all instead of a massive power wasting Rheostat.

I copied this circuit and this one. And then used the excellent free Yenka software to experiment with it until I found a circuit that worked the way I wanted, it's shown below:-
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I then created this stripboard layout diagram below using the brilliant free StripboardMagic software:-


Here is what the stripboard circuit should look like - it's not exactly micro-electronics, so I'm going to have to use a separate box to store this circuit in and another to contain the switches etc:-


I bought all the bits I needed from my local Maplin, except for the timer from my local RS electronics. It took quite a while to build, but eventually produced the PWM circuit shown below:-


And here it is after I added extra wires to join it up the power & switches etc:-


Here is the underside of the circuit:-


I covered the exposed bits and the bottom with glue gun glue to waterproof it and stop the connections falling to bits with the vibrations:-


And here you can see the sealed bottom:-

[SANGER_A2]

Here you can see the control box and the circuit box and the connecting wires that will go to the gloves and the power source:-


Here is the control box that will be used to turn the gloves on & off and adjust them etc. I put in a extra switch and LED for symmetry that I'll wire into something else when I need it:-


I glued all round the joins of the circuit box to keep the weather out of it:-


Here is where I mounted the box, it's not as hidden as I would like, but I needed it within easy access:-


And another view, the first switch turns the circuit on/off and the second switch switches between the PWM and full power for the gloves:-


I wired the power source into my relay that is also used to power my speed camera warning system. This means I can't accidentally leave my gloves on and kill my battery. I used to use a bit of chocolate block to do this, but it vibrated itself to pieces, so I had to solder the connections directly. It all works great.

Each of the gloves plugs into a DC power socket on each end of a Y cable that I run inside my jacket. The other end of the Y cable has to plug onto the bike somewhere. The original connectors that came with the Y cable and the connector that goes on the bike were crap. They broke very quickly so I just wired in a phono plug and socket. I ran the power cable going to the gloves underneath the tank and used cable ties to attach it to the frame just next to the rear brake reservoir:-

[CobaltFZ1]

Wow! Great stuff yet AGAIN!

[RJ2112]

<golf clapping>

Nice job!

[Cloggy]

Great work, and a very clear "how to"
Unfortunately I have to spread my rep around before giving it to Sanger again

[grommit]

Excellent.

[SANGER_A2]

Originally Posted by Cloggy

Great work, and a very clear "how to"
Unfortunately I have to spread my rep around before giving it to Sanger again

Lol. Me too! A lot of the credit for this goes to you though!

[Cloggy]

It's easy to offer commentary from the side lines
Once again well done. Aprox. how much did the parts costs and of course the question on everybodies lips, "whats your next project"

[SANGER_A2]

Originally Posted by Cloggy

It's easy to offer commentary from the side lines
Once again well done. Aprox. how much did the parts costs and of course the question on everybodies lips, "whats your next project"

Frankly, I can't be bothered to work it all out in detail! I'd guess £15-20 in parts - plus several hours work. I could have paid £40 for the heat-troller, but I would have been thinking to myself that I wasn't getting the max out of the gloves as it would still have been going through the PWM instead of the full 12 volts going into it.

The next project is the MRA flip (spoiler) screen I've got on order. Although that doesn't really count as it's 6 screws to change!

I've got loads of LED clusters I'm trying to decide if/where/when to mount on the bike and switch on and off with the other switch on my box to accent light the box.

Pretty much the last mods will be powder-coating everything silver and ceramic-coating the exhaust. There's not much else I want to do to it now!!!