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second 12 volt battery - 2020 edition

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Main Forum' started by geedub, Apr 27, 2020.

  1. geedub

    geedub Member

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    Mine hasn't blinked that I've noticed. The only way I can tell if the lid is closed tightly is to observe the handle. It's flat when latched properly.
     
  2. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Yeah, my lid has a fair amount of left-to-right play, almost a cm or so. It can be latched properly and the handle is flat, but if the lid is over to the left the magnets aren't aligned well enough and the light stays on. If it's over to the right the magnets align and the switch works.

    I may cut a little spacer out of something and slip it over the left hinge pin to solve that.

    By the way, looking at those hinges, there is obviously some kind of fiendish cleverness to them, like they might have just slipped onto the hinge pins somehow and there might be a way to pop them off. Have you ever tried? They're still more clever than I am, so far.
     
  3. geedub

    geedub Member

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    See this video at 1:20 for how to remove lid:
     
  4. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Huh. Mine refuses to do that. As far into the sound of groaning plastic as I dare to go....
     
  5. geedub

    geedub Member

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    My experience exactly.

    Chapman, can you direct me to a source for the remote switch you used for your inverter? Mine uses an rj jack, but are they brand-specific? Would like ti move it to the front so I don't leave it on accidentally.
     
  6. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    I think a lot of inverters use the RJ-11 jack, but the pinout may be brand-specific. What I did should be applicable to any Xantrex.

    I bought this switch, though I would have preferred this one if they had offered it at the time.

    The switch, as it arrives, has a mechanical push-on, push-off action. What a Xantrex inverter wants is a momentary button: the inverter itself will remember that your last push was to turn it on or to turn it off. (I see from the links above that now some of the switches they offer are momentary, as well as the ones that are push-on/push-off, so now you have to read the description more carefully).

    The switch is easily disassembled and it's easy to convert the push-on/push-off to momentary. You watch while pushing it to see the little spring and latch in action, bend that out of the way some, job done.

    The switch "color" is a matter of the two LEDs inside. I wired the lower one (lighting up the text legend) to the dash illumination, and the upper one (lighting the symbol) to show the status of the inverter. I might have had to cut a trace on the switch's PC board where the upper LED was directly controlled by the switch, to make it independent, and then matched it up to the status-LED output in the Xantrex remote control pinout.

    If I had been paying more attention to matching the Toyota color scheme, I would have kept green for the lower illumination one, but amber for the upper status one. I don't think that seller offers them in that particular combination, but they are run-of-the mill LEDs, it would be quick work with a soldering iron.

    The green LED is kind of the wrong green. If I ever have a moment with nothing higher on the to-do list, I may stir a little blue pigment into some clear Plasti-Dip and go blob that LED with it.

    I used this breakout board back near the inverter to transition from flat RJ cable to the wiring I ran to the front. It has some drilled holes if you want to mount a few electronic components on it. The Xantrex remote-control pinout includes an inhibit input that will prevent the inverter turning on if some other circuit is off. I mounted the necessary resistor on the breakout board, and wired from that screw terminal to a fuse and the output of my low-voltage disconnect, so it inhibits turning the inverter on if the car isn't READY first, and will then allow it to run for an hour after turning the car off, or down to 11.8 volts, whichever happens first. (Then the Xantrex inverter itself has a low-voltage shutoff set a bit below that, so the belt and the suspenders are plainly in evidence.)

    Don't forget that RJ-11 cables are sold in two flavors: straight through, or the wire order reversed end-to-end. Naturally, you can use either kind, and just do your wiring at the breakout board accordingly, but you do need to know which kind you've got.

    You can see the breakout board on the far right of the DIN rail, below (at an intermediate installation stage, wires to the front not yet connected, but the inhibit wire shown).

    [​IMG]
     
    #146 ChapmanF, Sep 22, 2020
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2020
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  7. geedub

    geedub Member

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    Thanks. I'll see if I can mirror your work.
     
  8. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    By the way, I notice that switch seller now sells several of their switch variants, on/off or momentary, different LED color combinations, with unengraved covers, in case there is a makerspace near you with engraving equipment you could drive from a design file of your choosing. You just engrave through the black outer layer down to the light-transmissive layer underneath.
     
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  9. geedub

    geedub Member

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    Nice!
     
  10. geedub

    geedub Member

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    To keep it simple I have an idea for mounting the original switch in a blank on my dash. I took the housing apart and it looks like the two LED's (power and fault) and the switch will fit behind the blank. On the piece that holds the lights and switch there are posts that received screws in the original configuration and I should be able to epoxy them to the back side of the blank insert. Kind of a quick 'n dirty solution.
     
  11. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    That might save a little time on the bench. The Xantrex official remote was a design they somehow made so fugly I couldn't picture it anywhere near the dash.

    [​IMG] (You can tell how fugly it is, the forum software won't even display it.)

    OTOH, with yours having a power and a fault line, I might still be tempted to get the push switch that fits, keep the bottom LED for panel illum, and swap the top one for a bicolor. :)
     
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  12. geedub

    geedub Member

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    Ok, true confusions time...

    I blew the head gasket recently.

    I limped to Tampa Hybrids and traded it to Todd for a 2013 with the deluxe sunroof package.
     
  13. Grit

    Grit Senior Member

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    Looks like you’ll be in for egr cleaning also.
     
  14. geedub

    geedub Member

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    I plan on using Todd for service also. Division of labor and such.
     
  15. geedub

    geedub Member

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    I bought a mobile home to flip and I'm putting the new-to-me Prius to work.

    20201006_183356.jpg
     
  16. geedub

    geedub Member

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    Speaking of battery packs....
     
  17. Terrell

    Terrell Old-Timer

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    My experience is that the light starts flashing to tell you, "Close the lid! You're letting all the cold out!"
     
  18. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    That's exactly what it thinks it's doing! Even when it is already blinking the moment you open the lid, and you can slip a phone inside recording video and see that it is blinking the whole time the lid is closed!

    Already solved in #140.
     
  19. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    If you're lugging that rooftop PV panel around anyway, you might think about letting it do more than run the vent.

    It can produce enough to cover one of these small fridges while good sun is shining (and still run the vent!), so the daytime part of your fridge usage can be close to free.