Another interesting used item from eBay and this is Uh from a car scrapping company and it's a Kia Sportage ionizer and on the back it says caution: high Voltage out Voltage DC three plus minus 3.2 KV Do not take off while working And the information that I found in this is it's not in all models, it's only in this upper class. Modules models should save the vehicle with the extra featured in air conditioning system and the information I found was the cluster ionizer disinfects and decomposes bad smell from the air conditioner or air inflow. Also, it cleans the air inside the vehicle when the ignition is switched on. The ionizer runs clean mode and then ion mode switching between both modes.

In the clean mode, the cluster ionizer generates negative ions and positive ions to help clean the smells in the air. In the ion mode, the cluster ionizer generates negative ions and cleans the air inside the vehicle. Now it's worth noting, but there are two electrodes sticking out here with sharp points and a bit mashed from Air from through being thrown around a scrap yard. and uh, one of them are six points and the other one is three and other modules I Looked at some of them had a very sharp solid metal point and another of them had one of them as a carbon fiber brush.

Interesting. So I think the reason they say cluster ionizer is they're cashing in on one of the most famous things in Japan the plasma cluster by Sharp. It's a very famous air conditioning unit, a module found in air conditioning units that creates both positive and negative ions. You can see the effect of ionization in here.

it's all with uh with exhaust and pollution schmoo and in the circuit board as well I have had to play about the connections, we get the positive, we've got the negative. There are a couple of hours that I think are data and one that says ion I'm not really sure I couldn't get it to do anything but you know what these things are like. they're they're all tied into the engine management system and uh, this can send fault codes back to say when it's 40 so it lights that little expensive light in your dashboard I think at the moment I want this metal cover off because we're really not seeing much here and this is where all the high voltage Shenanigans is. So I'm going to throw a bit of silver onto the screening can and hopefully it's not going to suck all the heat away.

So put on some juicy lead-based soda which is better for melting and it just also refreshes the solder. If you ever have a problem desoldering something, flow a bit of fresh silver on it makes a significant difference and then I'm going to just gently pull down the can at this side while I heat that see if anything happens well there's movement right now I'll try the other side. there's movement there as well, but I'm only getting a small amount of movement each time. That's okay.

that's good enough. Let's go back to the other side. Anything? No I might not be getting anything I shall position my finger so I can drag up this in some way. strain, strain stream.

you have to pause while I do this because it's not doing much, is it? Oh, it doesn't want to come off. it's making creaky noises right? Tell you what? I shall pause briefly while I do this one moment please. Um, well, that doesn't help at all, does it? It's a solid potted block underneath that. okay next step.

Kicking this block off one moment, please. Oh, totally resin ported. That's not helpful I mean I can understand why they did it. It's a high voltage device right here now.

I have to go deeper into this to see if I can work out if it's driven from adult C transistors. Really? Obviously, that could be used to drive this on board here. I'd normally expect to see Push Pull but who said that? I wonder if it's all the electronics are in here? I shall investigate that one moment, please. Well, that was a very long one moment, please.

And in that time I have completely reverse engineered it. It's quite interesting. I've also worked out how to hack it and bypass it so you can just use this without any external car control. And the good news is you don't even need to go inside to do that.

You can put a little sort of Link inside, but you can do it all externally. But in the first instance, I'm going to put a little black backdrop in here and I'm going to zoom down in this so you can see the ionization in progress. So the ionizer module on the circuit board is covered by the metal screening case, but also another layer of plastic. They're going super mega far with the eye solution for good reason.

let me turn the power on. So this is it at fill cluster mode. So this is the negative one. This is the positive one.

and there's not a fair voltage. There's a fair voltage premium indeed that's jumping. I would say about four of an inch six millimeter. Uh, if no, I'll just turn this off while I do this and Bridge I hope because it does hold a charge.

Uh, if I take the ion input which puts it down into ionizer mode and I just stuff that into the crop clip and turn it on again. This time, the current has dropped from a 100 milliamps down to 71 milliamps and when I put this in this time, it's much shorter. It's about half the voltage up. So they're only jumping about eighths of an inch.

Three millimeters this time as soon as you knock that resistor out again. Oh, it goes back up to a full-on 100 milliamp hundred and similar. Lovely. I Hope that's not making incredibly loud cracking noises through the microphone.

it sometimes does. And Bridget and touch it. Yes, it's off. Excellent.

So let me show you the circuit board itself. Here is the back of the circuit board. It's very uncluttered. I shall zoom out for this, it would make sense to zoom out.

I should also Focus down onto a suitable layer. So the back of the circuit board is, uh, it's not getting components on. it is purely it's surface mount circuit board, but with three-hole components too. and even the power supplies mounted on the other side.

But with the electrodes coming through on the other side though, it gets a lot more complicated. We have the main activation transistor that turns the unit on. We have a voltage regulator. it regulates it from 12 to 14 volts down to approximately 7.4 volts.

We have the transistor that drives the high voltage. Transformer Now I Thought this was going to be a smart module and you'd give just give it 12 volts and then control signals. No, this is done. It's just two windings.

um, and uh, the output. This I didn't Deport it because depotting this would be quite tricky. but the output will be a couple of diodes and capacitors more slightly in the high voltage winding. And it's neat that they've drawn the bobbin in here.

You've got the primary, the separator, and then you've got the multiple sections of the um, the actual the high voltage winding. Um, this chip here I thought was going to be an eight pin microcontroller is not. It's a comparator and its only purpose is to Signal back to the unit that uh, that the ionization is happening. Well, it doesn't even tell you the ionization's happening.

It just tells you this oscillator is running based around this transistor. Here, the feedback circuitry is all discrete around that, and even this transistor. Here, that's the ion transistor that switches mode, right? Tell you what. Let's go to the schematic: I should mention by the way that it says in the original data about this that it goes into when you turn the engine on, it goes into cluster mode.

That's presumably based on Sharps plasma cluster technology. It's got the positive uh, this monopositive electrodiscuit, larger or negative electrode with the sharp points in it, and uh, it causes molecular chemistry. It breaks the atoms of the the molecules apart and atoms of the air. and then they recombine temporarily in an unstable state that has strong cleansing properties in the air.

It's Nature's Own Way of cleaning stuff. It does happen naturally outdoors with all these things that it's creating, but when it goes into ion mode, it doesn't specifically, just it implies it turns it into an active ionizer. It doesn't. It just basically tames a thing down.

it reduces its output, but it is still doing that Corona thing. Uh, incidentally, I did look through a sensitive camera at it in the dark and either it's because it's a well-worn with age or it's just because it's very low output which I'd understand. There's very little tiny specks of Corona purple Corona discharge in the dark and that suits the fact it is. For a vehicle, it's a tiny space.

it's all geared and scaled down just so it doesn't produce too much of the Active Components like ozone in case it causes irritation. So here's the power supply section. The plug itself has two thicker wires, an orange and a black one. positive and negative.

it is three smaller wires, the brown ion one that turns it down to the lower level. The Clu which turns out to be the activation pin I could zoom in this a little bit further. couldn't I I could zoom in a little bit further. So the sale here is the activation if you want to turn it on remote external if you want to bypass the internal controls.

If you want to basically emulate this doesn't interface directly to the car's engine management system, the ECU This is obviously a air conditioning module that it goes into and it is just purely. it's a logic level signals. So the red one is the Cou which activates this whole unit and if you tie it with a 10 key resistor to positive then it will basically turn the unit on at full power if you want to tame it down, connect the ion to positive. I'd recommend doing it via resistor, but it turns out on the circuit board there is a resistor and dig is just a feedback.

it's a signal back that it's working. So the incoming Supply goes through a product protection diode so it is mechanic proof and also people connect the battery back to front proof which is good. It's got a filter capacitor, this fairly chunky ceramic looking capacitor I think is a ceramic pasta, then it's got a large Reservoir capacitor, a inductor for filtering a smoke pass, ceramic pastor, and then it's got the main transistor that turns on that is a PNP transistor normally turned off with this one key resistor on its base going up to the positive rail. Uh, it is peeled down to turn it on by this other little transistor that is connected to Clu.

Note: there is no resistor to the base of this transistor. you must put a resistor in to limit the current to that. I'm surprised they did that. I Thought they could have just there's plenty of room for it.

They could have stuck a little 1K 10K resistor in there, but they haven't And there is this a little capacitor here for avoiding interference, causing it to glitch on and off that super high speed. Whatever they've they've included it I've drawn the transistor this way I could have drawn it just interrupting the positive real. but I've drawn it this way because it's going to make it a lot easier for people who are used to the orientation of a PNP transistor so that then switches power through to the regulator. The Regulators are capacitor either side and it's a 317 MB adjustable regulator and it's got a potential divider which just sets the voltage according to a reference voltage goes in and that gives out 7.4 volts and this common zero volt rail.

Excellent! So far, so good. Now this circuit board this schematic should I say schematic has a bit drawn in green. That's because it's the monitoring circuitry units to keep it separate because it is otherwise quite a cluttered design. It was already bad enough without it.

Oh, where do I start? So here is the plus: 7.4 volts and here is zero volts. Initially, when you turn the power onto it, current will flow through this resistor and a little pulse through this capacitor and start turning this transistor on. When it does, current starts flowing through the primary and uh, then it induces current in the feedback which then finds a path back through the capacitor and this resistor and it starts turning that transistor on harder and it turns on to the point that uh, it can't couple magnetic field across anymore and then it starts the magnetic field collapse and it effectively does the opposite and it turns itself off so it then starts oscillating Powers it forwards. There is a feedback system.

It's complex as the field collapses. Depending on what's needed in the secondary, the voltage across this feedback winding will be negative with respect to the zero volt reel, and it charges this capacitor up negatively. Note: Out of the positive connection of electrical to Capacitor 10, Microfarad 50 volt is connected to the zero volt Rail and its negative side is being charged negative to with respect to that rail. These two zeners mean that this feedback path has to go above the voltage of the Zener and the negative voltage of that Uh capacitor to be able to start turning this transistor on.

So it's a regulation system and when you take the ion input High Notice there's the 4k7 resistor on it. It turns on this transistor that then puts a lower voltage zener in, so that has to work even harder to actually get above that threshold. So that's how it turns the output down. It just basically affects the oscillation amplitude.

There are two 2 ohm resistors here, giving a total one ohm just purely to protect the transistor. I Guess And then we've got the secondary which is referenced. It's got the option on this. It's got a separate pin for the ground, but it is referenced to the zero volt rail, the chassis or chassis and then it will inside have the diode going from the high voltage winding, high voltage diode going to the positive side with its own capacitor and the negative side that's one capacitor.

The normally have a little resist on the output, but given the cracks and zaps off that I would say that it doesn't have it. Oh, it's so easy describing it. compared to how long it took to reverse engine here, that was a formidable reverse engineering the feedback circuitry as this goes positive to show its oscillating. If it wasn't oscillating, this would be the field here would collapse and see a zero volt reference so it wouldn't charge this capacitor.

If it does start oscillating, it charges that capacitor up to a voltage level that represents the activity of the feedback. There is a potential divider going to the input of the comparator which only one side is used. The compartor screwed me up for a long time because I got the pin out wrong. It is a reference voltage going in which is just a potential divider based around four.

Resistor switch is quite odd and then it's got a pull-up resistor. Now put a diode and then a filter capacitor and then it goes to the Dig pin. And as far as I can see, the Dig pin simply tells the actual processor, the main control module. It says that ionizer, you've powered it up and it is running and uh, put an output and here's the confirmation signal.

It's doing that. If it doesn't get that, it will maybe give it a bit of time. able to turn it off and on again? don't know. and then it'll like the very expensive.

Little Engine shaped indicator on your Uh on your dashboard and then you have to take it into a garage and decide what you're going to do. There are probably ways to fake this. There are ways to fake this. You could, uh, just put a resistor from the positive to the green dig wire and that would fill it into thinking everything was just completely funky.

I Think that would work I think that's the way they're doing it anyway. Um, so the two bypasses that you need for this if you want to run it are the one where you basically connect the 10K resistor between the Uh, the enable wire, the red wire in this instance and the positive. And if you want to run it at lower output level, then you can add another resistor and wire between the brown wire and the positive as well That that brings it down to the lower level. There we go.

Oh damn. I wish it was I wish it had been that fast to reverse engineer it, but it wasn't. It took a long time so that's quite interesting. These have been around for decades.

This technology I Think this is a luxury feature that you have to pay more to actually get that feature. I'll bring the image up. Well, it didn't bring up that much, but I think this is a luxury option that you're conditioning and it's very Japanese Because they love their plasma cluster units, It's It's pretty much the same as the Sharp plasma cluster, but every component makes these has their own version. They're just basically it's like a ionizer with the extra feature of not just creating that extra medley of chemistry with the positive electrodes, as well as the high voltage negative electrodes, but also because they're in the vicinity of each other and there's a sort of ionic short circuit.

It does create that extra Corona discharge which enhances that and creates the odor destroying and virus destroying chemicals. But there we go. That is it. The ion unit out or whatever the name of that, it was a Kia Sportage Uh, that's the ionizer unit outer.

That's the bit that keeps the air conditioning sanitary and also keeps your vehicle odor free.