Kinda an odd idea. But I work somewhere I cannot have my phone with me. So it sits in the car. Another engineer and I were talking at lunch and thought we could build a containment unit that would hold a cellphone in a car, and using the cars 12v, an arduino, and a TEC.
I have an existing low battery cutoff for my dash cam. So it will quit when the battery drops. Is this feasible to last a few hours? It hits 90 in the day outside. Phone sits in a black car, I’m thinking 130-140 in the car usually.
Will a computer heat sink pull enough heat to make the delta temp doable?
Have you tried the glove compartment or center console? You may need to find a place at work to hide it… I’ve done it, never got caught… With the new smart phones, as long as it it does not get to a temp to physically melt anything, the phone will alright. My phone sits in my center console in my Jeep and Jeeps are known for the heat in this area. I’ve picked it up hot to the touch and tried to use it, when it stated that it needed to cool off. So, it has a safety feature for heat.
Standard rating for commercial components is 0-70 degrees C operating temperature. Storage temperatures (if you can turn the phone completely off) are even higher. Are you sure you are actually solving a problem?
codlink:
Have you tried the glove compartment or center console? You may need to find a place at work to hide it… I’ve done it, never got caught… With the new smart phones, as long as it it does not get to a temp to physically melt anything, the phone will alright. My phone sits in my center console in my Jeep and Jeeps are known for the heat in this area. I’ve picked it up hot to the touch and tried to use it, when it stated that it needed to cool off. So, it has a safety feature for heat.
Unfortunately its not a policy issue, its a security one. Not worth it to do that.
I used to have a wrangler, and it sat under the seat and never had issues. Now it sits in a black corvette and cooks all day. I have been getting the temp warning lately… so it sparked an idea. Glove box gets really got with the dashcam unit in it. Console gets equally hot. Maybe I will leave it at home
Put it in a small cooler. Leave the lid off while you drive to work so it’s more or less ambient temp inside the cooler when you get to work. Put the phone in, put the lid on. That should at least slow down the temperature rise the phone sees.
skimask:
Where are you going to dump the excess heat?
Back into the interior of the car?
Interior heat rises even more.
Wash, lather, rinse, repeat.
And, you’ll need a jump-start to boot at the end of the day.
I agree with skimask. Peltier devices are grossly inefficient (~10-15%), meaning that 85-90% of the energy you put into the device will end up as more heat inside the car. You could put the cold side of the Peltier device and the phone inside a small insulated box, which would be a win for keeping the phone cool, but you’re going to be dumping even more heat into the inside of your car, and as skimask noted, you may need a jumpstart to get home.
I’d probably just turn off the phone and slide it under the floor mat. It’ll be out of the direct sun and it’ll be cooler near the floor. Also, if someone broke into your car, the first places they will look will be the glove box and the console.
