The Heat-troller™ is a DC (direct
current), power controller designed for heated clothing,
blankets, pads and other heated products that are powered by a
battery. You can think of the Heat-troller™
as a dimmer switch for your heated products. It has a positive
off and provides a full range of heat that is constant at any
setting, just as a light dimmer switch gives you constant
light at different levels.
The Heat-Troller is a pulse-width modulated controller with a 1 second cycle time.
That means that over a 1 second period, the power is turned on from about 10% to 100%
of the time, adjustable with the knob on the controller. When the power is turned on,
full power is applied to the load. In the example given, if the heated grip are
16 Watts each and the Heat-Troller is adjusted to 50%, the grips will get 16 Watts for
half a second, then no power for half a second, giving an average of 8 Watts of power.
The Heat-Troller is more efficient than a rheostat because it makes very little wasted
heat when turned on. For two 16 Watt grips, the Heat-Troller makes less than 0.1 Watts
of heat at 50%.
A rheostat would make about 16 Watts of wasted heat at the same 50% setting.
The Single Heat-troller™ is 1.5
in x 2.25 in x .85 in or 38 mm x 57 mm x 21.5 mmin size and the case actually tapers so that it fits
easily into the hand. It is small enough to Velcro on to
clothing, to a tank bag, to a wheel chair and yet is not so
small that it becomes hard to handle while wearing gloves or
if physically challenged. The Heat-troller™
comes either in a Portable model or a Permanent model designed
to mount out of sight with only the switch and L.E.D. showing.
This not only works well for mounting in everything from
motorcycles to toll booths but can be used to replace the two
position switches for snow mobile hand grips and heated car
seats.
The efficiency of the design allows over 98% of the power
from your battery to reach your heated clothing. As a matter
of fact, we tested the simple on/off switches designed by
other companies and in one case found it to lose 25% of the
power from the battery by the time the current reached the
vest.
Instructions for
Testing Controller and Switches
When you turn the Heat-troller™ on or off you can feel and hear the positive
snap of the switch. Because the
Heat-troller™ is a solid state device, the switch
controls the electronics not the power. This allows for the switch to have a true OFF
position. But even if the Heat-troller™ is left turned
on and plugged into a power source but
unplugged from the heated product , the most power it will
draw is just the power to flash the LED.
We recommend the Dual Heat-troller™ for controlling
different peices of clothing on the same person. Such as but not only,
liner and gloves or liner and pants. It is not
designed to run clothing on two people and we do not recommend
it used for controlling heated handgrips. If you want to
control clothing and heated handgrips then purchase a Single
Mounted Heat-troller™ and a Heated Handgrip Heat-troller. We
believe so much in this solution that we will discount the
price $10 to make the price equal to a Dual Mounted
Heat-troller.
The Heat-troller™
can be ordered in a 24 Volt model. Be aware that the
clothing must also be ordered in the same way. We only
recommend installing it in applications where the concern for
drawing the battery down low enough to damage it is greater
than the need to get every bit of power out of the battery in
an emergency situation.
When we first designed the Dual Heat-troller™ we knew there
was a potential problem of plugging in the output of the
Heat-troller™ to the input of the liner and the output to the
pants, in effect plugging the heat-troller in to itself and
killing it. So to prevent this we made them with one SAE and
one Coax output. But Gerbing and Harley did not want to use
that design and so for a number of years we had to deal with
people who plugged the heat-troller into itself and killed it.
Now that we no longer do business with Gerbing or Harley and
we can build things properly, we decided to not offer it.
We heard that some one took one of your
old designs to China and had it copied. It even has a bug in
it. Is this true?
Is it a copy or a knock off? The Circuit is the same as our
ver 6. The part designators are the same as on our ver 6
board. It has a flaw in the design
so that if you have it turned off, but still plugged to power and
ground the output, it will turn the LED on. This to us is a
flaw. Maybe to others it is not but we replaced the
Heat-trollers we sold with this flaw and only sold them for
two weeks before we found the defect. We can provide you with
the technical data that allows you to decide if it is a copy
or a knock off. So, here is the test since now there is no
other way to know if it is a Chinese knock off or not. Take
the unit and plug it in to power. Turn it off. Touch the
ground ring of the output connector to a frame ground like the
handle bars or the metal tank. Does the LED turn on? Do you
think it is OK for the LED to be on when the unit is turned
off? If so then it is the Chinese knock off.
