Fan With Automatic Door Is Perfect For Camper Vans

Ventilation fans are useful for clearing stuffy or stale air out of a space. However, they also tend to act as a gaping hole into said space. In the case of caravans and RVs, an open ventilation fan can be terrible for keeping the interior  space warm, quiet, and free from dust. “Blast doors” or fan blocks are a common way to solve this problem. [Raphtronic] whipped up a duly-equipped ventilation fan to do just that.

The solution was to create a fan setup with a custom fan holder and a sliding door to block airflow when necessary. [Raphtronic] designed a fan frame for this purpose using parts 3D printed in ASA plastic. This material was chosen such that they could readily withstand the 50 C (120 F) temperatures typical in his Ford Transit camper during the summer. A simple 12 V ventilation fan was then fitted to the frame, along with a sliding door controlled by a 12 V linear actuator.

The mode of operation is simple. A DPDT switch controls the linear actuator. Flipped one way, the linear actuator is fed 12 V in such a polarity as to move it to open the fan door. In this mode, 12 volts is also supplied to the fan to start ventilation. When the switch is flipped the other way, the actuator moves to the closed position, and a diode in the circuit stops the fan spinning backwards. As a bonus, limit switches are built into the linear actuator, so there’s no need for any microcontrollers, “off” switch positions, or additional wiring.

It’s a tidy solution to the problem of ventilating a camper in a clean and effective manner. Files are on GitHub for those wishing to build their own. We’ve seen some great work in this area before, like this off-grid van project that made excellent use of 3D scanning during the build process. If you’ve designed and built your own nifty camping gear, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!

Hackaday Prize 2023: AutoDuct Smart Air Duct

Modern building techniques are relying more and more on passive elements to improve heating and cooling efficiencies, from placing windows in ways to either absorb sunlight or shade it out to using high R-value insulation to completely sealing the living space to prevent airflow in or out of the structure. One downside of sealing the space in this fashion, though, is the new problem of venting the space to provide fresh air to the occupants. This 3D printed vent system looks to improve things.

Known as the AutoDuct, the shutter and fan combination is designed to help vent apartments with decentralized systems. It can automatically control airflow and also reduces external noise passing through the system using a printed shutter mechanism which is also designed to keep out cold air on windy days.

A control system enables features like scheduling and automatic humidity control. A mobile app is available for more direct control if needed. The system itself can also integrate into various home automation systems like Apple’s HomeKit.

A 100% passive house that’s also as energy-efficient as possible might be an unobtainable ideal, but the closer we can get, the better. Some other projects we’ve seen lately to help climate control systems include this heat pump control system and this automatic HVAC duct booster fan system.

Review: WAINLUX K8, A Diode Laser That’s Ready To Work

Rarely a week goes by that some company doesn’t offer to send us their latest and greatest laser. You know the type — couple of aluminum extrusions, Class 4 diode flopping around in the breeze, and no enclosure to speak of unless you count the cardboard box they shipped it in. In other words, an accident waiting to happen. Such gracious invitations get sent to the trash without a second thought.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that the average Hackaday reader would be able to render such a contraption (relatively) safe for use around the shop. Build a box around it, bolt on a powerful enough fan to suck the smoke out through the window, and you’ve turned a liability into a legitimate tool. But the fact remains that we simply can’t put our stamp on something that is designed with such a blatant disregard for basic safety principles.

The earlier WAINLUX JL4 — lucky rabbit foot not included.

That being the case, a recent email from WAINLUX nearly met the same fate as all those other invitations. But even at a glance it was clear that this new machine they wanted to send out, the K8, was very different from others we’d seen. Different even from what the company themselves have put out to this point. This model was fully enclosed, had a built-in ventilation fan, an optional air filter “sidecar”, and yes, it would even turn off the laser if you opened the door while it was in operation. After reading through the promotional material they sent over, I had to admit, I was intrigued.

It seemed like I wasn’t the only one either; it was only a matter of days before the Kickstarter for the WAINLUX K8 rocketed to six figures. At the time of this writing, the total raised stands at just under $230,000 USD. There’s clearly a demand for this sort of desktop laser, the simplicity of using a diode over a laser tube is already appealing, but one that you could actually use in a home with kids or pets would be a game changer for many people.

But would the reality live up to the hype? I’ve spent the last couple of weeks putting a pre-production WAINLUX K8 through its paces, so let’s take a look and see if WAINLUX has a winner on their hands.

Continue reading “Review: WAINLUX K8, A Diode Laser That’s Ready To Work”

Is This The Oldest Open Source HVAC Project In Existence?

Homebrew HVAC systems are one of those projects that take such a big investment of time, effort and money that you’ve got to be a really dedicated (ideally home-owning) hacker with a wide variety of multidisciplinary skills to pull off an implementation that can work in reality. One such HVAC hacker is [Vadim Tkachenko] with his multi-zone Home Climate Control (HCC) project that we covered first back in 2007. We now have rare opportunity to look at the improvements fifteen years of part-time development can produce, when a project is used all day, all year round in their own home. At the start, things were simple, just opening and closing ventilators with none of those modern MQTT-driven cloud computing stuff. Continue reading “Is This The Oldest Open Source HVAC Project In Existence?”

The Benefits Of Displacement Ventilation

The world has been shaken to its core by a respiratory virus pandemic. Humanity has been raiding the toolbox for every possible weapon in the fight, whether that be masks, vaccinations, or advanced antiviral treatments.

As far as medicine has come in tackling COVID-19 in the past two years, the ultimate solution would be to cut the number of people exposed to the pathogen in the first place. Improving our ventilation methods may just be a great way to cut down on the spread. After all, it’s what they did in the wake of the Spanish Flu.

Continue reading “The Benefits Of Displacement Ventilation”

3D Printing Air Filter System Does A Lot

We know we aren’t supposed to eat a lot of sugar, but we still have ice cream. We also know we probably shouldn’t be inhaling solder smoke and 3D printer fumes, but we do that too. Not [Mike Buss]. His 3D printer has a major exhaust system.

We can sympathize with his process. He mentions he started out just wanting a fan running with some filters. Then he decided to add a way to turn the fan on and off when printing. Then he added sensors to detect fumes and fire. Data collection was almost an afterhthought.

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Ventilators 101: What They Do And How They Work

Treating the most serious cases of COVID-19 calls for the use of ventilators. We’ve all heard this, and also that there is a shortage of these devices. But there is not one single type of ventilator, and that type of machine is not the only option when it comes to assisted breathing being used in treatment. Information is power and having better grasp on this topic will help us all better understand the situation.

We recently wrote about a Facebook group focused on open source ventilators and other technology that could assist in the COVID-19 pandemic. There was an outpouring of support, and while the community is great when it comes to building things, it’s clear we all need more information about the problems doctors are currently dealing with, and how existing equipment was designed to address them.

It’s a long and complicated topic, though, so go get what’s left of your quarantine snacks and let’s dig in.

Continue reading “Ventilators 101: What They Do And How They Work”