This device is designed to plug into your USB port and warm water and aroma oils to liberate their chemical scents. Given the limitations of power available from a USB port it only draws about 2W of power, which is barely enough to raise the dish to body temperature.
With the low power I was expecting the circuitry to be as simple as a resistor to heat the dish and perhaps just a resistor and LED for the power indicator.
I was wrong. The circuitry inside is obscenely complicated for such a simple function and includes temperature sensing. All a bit moot really since the dish is probably never going to get hot enough even if it was just a simple resistor.
I think this may be about to get hacked.
With the low power I was expecting the circuitry to be as simple as a resistor to heat the dish and perhaps just a resistor and LED for the power indicator.
I was wrong. The circuitry inside is obscenely complicated for such a simple function and includes temperature sensing. All a bit moot really since the dish is probably never going to get hot enough even if it was just a simple resistor.
I think this may be about to get hacked.
It looks like something Mercedes would have designed.
Many if not most essential oils are chemically very unstable and decompose easily, so it's not a good idea to heat them up a lot (hence the complicated temperature control in this device). But it isn't really necessary at all to raise temperature a lot, since the vapor pressure of the compounds is usually high enough for them to evaporate already at room temperature.
So depending on what is being evaporated, I think that taking the temperature to about 20 degrees above ambient temperature sounds like a good idea.
So, a resistor and a PTC in series could replace all that heating circuitry?
Aroma dish…
420 milli amps…
Well then.
Did you plug it in in the front USB port of your pc? It seems that the rear USB ports provide more power since my external HDD wasnt powering up in the front but it did in the back 🙂
Does that internal circuit limit the current to 420 mA, or is it limited by the power supply? If it's limited by the power supply then maybe this was designed to be powered by a wall adapter capable of supplying at least 1A, not by a laptop. Despite what people may think, a lot of USB powered devices aren't meant to be powered by a laptop.
It's a bug.
Would the guts make an effective hand warmer using a portable charger as a power supply?
it is so cool
could be good for wax..
Did you ever mess around with it? I would love to see what you can do with it.
Forget about USB, I'd buy one and connect it to a stronger supply
The additional circuitry is there because you have to do a request through USB to get maximum power from the USB port itself.