INTEREST? Heated seat controller for stock switches and ebay heaters

[str alorman]

Hey All;
General question for the community:
What are people's interest in a unit that would plug into OEM switches and output to ebay seat heaters?

I was looking to do this for my vehicle and ended up reverse engineering the oem switches. I've coupled them to a small microcontroller and two big MOSFETS, so I can output varied current to whatever heaters I choose.

I'm going to have a custom board spun up in the next couple of weeks, boards are way cheaper in group buys, I wanted to gauge the community interest in such a thing.

So to install you wou;d:
Acquire the above custom board unit (or build it yourself, I plan to open source everything).
Buy a pair of switches from your junkyard/ebay of choice
Buy a generic heated seat kit from ebay
Plug them all together
???
Conquer the World?

What do people think? I'm going to make one for myself at a bare minimum.
Thoughts?

Thanks!
-a

 

[simple]

Sorry man, I'm not entirely sure I'm following what you're trying to say. As far as I know, this has not been done, or no one has had success adding seat heaters using OEM switches. There has been one guy who sounded like he did something maybe like this, but he was not very clear with what he was saying and he was kind of a dick when someone asked about it. If you search adding rear seat heater you can find it.

 

[str alorman]

simple;
Sorry! Edited the above for clarity! Thanks for pointing it out.

I'm seeing if people are interested enough that it's worth having a bunch of boards made up.

Thanks!

-a

 

[zidaro]

Im interested.
Been wanting to add heaters to the rear seats, this could certainly make my wiring project a simpler task.
Assuming this would work for any heater application?
I might be more interested in the Rostra brand, no clue what Ebay units have in common.

 

[str alorman]

You could connect whichever heater brand you wanted. As long as there are two wires, it could be connected.
Hell, you could connect it to a motor and have seat massagers if you wanted.

 

[Trumpet]

How does your price scale?

 

[simple]

Surprised there's not more interest in this. Any updates?

 

[str alorman]

All;
I'm finally coming back to this project.
I still plan to install ebay heat pads in my seats and use the OEM switchgear with a custom controller.

If anyone has the mating plugs for the seat heat switches, I'd love to get hands-on. I have the switches themselves, but a plug would also be useful.

I'll keep this thread updated and plan to share all my learning.

-a

 

[ElDuck]

I'd be interested if the aftermarket ones will get hotter than factory..?

While my factory heated seats get warm, they leave a lot to be desired after having newer Jeep and Audi heated seats where you're at risk of burning exposed skin. Exaggerating, but they do get HOT, where as mine are like a meh-warm.

 

[Burt]

So you're out to market the controller modules? I just retired from being 38 years in electronic engineering. There could be liability issue with this venture unless a robust watchdog circuit is integrated. Why MOSFET's? Some simple solid state relays would do.

 

[str alorman]

I'd be interested if the aftermarket ones will get hotter than factory..?

While my factory heated seats get warm, they leave a lot to be desired after having newer Jeep and Audi heated seats where you're at risk of burning exposed skin. Exaggerating, but they do get HOT, where as mine are like a meh-warm.

Interesting. Not really a clue if there are warmer heated seat units available from the usual suspects. I'll have a look.