The Ben Heck Show Camping Chair Rebuild Finished

Hi everyone,

My name is shane and i was the winner of the camping chair i received the chair and all accessories in the post today and i am already getting started on the modifications that i am planning to do, which are as follows:

• case for the psu (hopefully watertight depending on materials)
• change from camping chair to camping bed chair
• add supports for the fans (possibly 2 different positions depending on if it is needed)
• add a removable stand in the drink cooler for ease of access for cans
• a candy/chocolate holder on the outside of the drink cooler
• insulating the drink cooler
• fan for the cooler
• female usb port for phone charging
• reducing the smoke detector (don't like the look of having an actually smoke alarm on the chair)

so far these are the changes i am planning to make and i will be updating this post as i do these one by one

I am currently working on a case for the psu and will have pictures and possibly a video up shortly

PSU

i have designed and prototyped a case for the psu currently made using some spare balsa wood

i have left a gap in the top for the heat sync to come out of this kept the design slim and also made the heat sync stable

as i noticed that the chip it was on was very precarious and the wrong move would have snapped this off and i would like to avoid unwanted soldering i then created 3 holes for the connectors to attach to into at this moment in time i have not done any testing on how the unit will work in a wood case i will come to do this at a later date when i move onto the electronic side of things.

my scroll saw blade was the thickness of the black lines so no need to add spacing for waste material

Printed CAD drawing of the design

Starting the assembly process

Finished building

Rendering of the design

do you have any other ideas you would love to see done to this build i will be happy to look into any ideas you have

Update 2

In between going to college and my internet going down i managed to find some time to work on the build and i got a fair amount of work done on the building side of things i might of skipped some of the planning stages and worked freehand on my designs i do tend to do this a lot with one off builds.

materials

The material i have decided to go for on most of the build process is balsa wood, working with it on smaller objects means it doesn't need much structural strength and it absorbs moisture well this should deal well with insulation the components from airborne moisture but the case itself won't be water proof, the thickness of the wood means that the occasional water from won't make it through and will soak into the outer some of the case to i might add a waterproof paint or an oil finish onto the outside of the case.

The lid

For the lid of the drink cooler i decided to cut a piece if wood just larger than the top by a fraction of a mm and then i cut some pieces from a large sheet about 1cm wide and the length of the 3d printed attachment i left a gap for the fixing at the back and added a small handle for lifting it on and off

the drink riser

i decided to change the design a little here and went for a device that would stay in the cooler all the time and could be used to lift the drink to a desired hight high enough for you to be able to comfortably lift the drink out, now i know wood wasn't going to work here and i didn't have any plastic available to use to test until i saw a plastic ruler i have quite a few lying around and picked one to use for testing i heated the plastic just enough to manipulate it into a l shaped figure with an area at the top for ease of use when lifting it up, i am not sure if i will sand this down for a desired look or change this for a different material i will look into that at a later date when i come to finishing the riser

new case for the smoke detector

my original idea was to steam a sheet of wood and bend for a curved back for the case until i looked at my wood supply and realised i had used all of my 3mm thick balsa on another project (macbook cooling stand for decreasing the cpu temp by about 20 degree celsius) so i went for a simple box for the circuit board i added some velcro onto the top for psu to attach onto, i fixed the power cable socket onto the side and left a small gap for any cables to run in and out this is also where i an thinking of adding the usb charger to (maybe) this is still unfinished at the moment as i need to add vents for the smoke to be able to get in and out of the case for the detector to work properly

Fan for the heatsink and case

i added a laptop fan inside of the heatsink so that it could work more efficiently the fan i have used is 5v so i need to teach myself some more about what is the best way to add this and the usb charger to the circuit but i will get to this problem when i need to the fan brings air in from both sides and pushes it up towards the base i believe that this will be the best position but testing will be the key to finding out i also added 2 pieces of wood to fill the sides of the heatsink so that it would pull air through the heatsink and not around it.

Update 3

Over the past 2 days i have been working on the bed chair little and on the electronics I'm going to cover the bed chair first as this is the simpler of the 2.

The bed chair

I came across the issue of where to place all of the components i thought of drilling mounting points along the frame but as it is hollow aluminium tubing i didn't want for effect the strength of the chair so i decided to add a piece of wood that i had lying around from a previous project (hence the left over glue) to the back and thread it through the elastic this gave it a secure and tight fitting all that needs doing is adding the mount points for the electronics and finishing the wood, i used rubber bands to mock the positions out before i decided on the final positions of the fans i an going to drill through the wood and shorten the metal pipe to sit flush with the wood the 3d printed stand that ben designed will work great for changing the position of the fan for seated and lying positions

The electronics

drink cooler

i got started on testing the electronics and if you have seen my other post you will know that i have come across some issues, i am using a mains power supply as i have not acquired a battery yet, the first one i used was 12v 500ma and the peltier killed it (i am unsure on what ma the Peltier draws) so i used one that is 12v 1200ma this gets the peltier down to 9 degrees celsius which is perfect for a chilled drink but this is running the Peltier straight from the power without the unit ben built, i found while using the unit ben built the peltier is only getting 9.8 v and will only cool to 16 degrees still working on fixing this issue

psu with usb

I added a usb port to the psu from the 5v power for the smoke detector and the fans tested this with my phone and it works great at charging,

i then removed some material from the case for the usb to sit on the side

The final build

Today i worked on the final build/assembly and here are the full list of modifications from the original design:

• change from chair to bed chair
• casing for the psu and the smoke detector
• lid for the drink cooler
• drink riser for smaller cans/bottles
• usb port for phone charging

i have decided not to spend more time on the design for the mount for the fans or drink cooler at the moment, this is because i was having difficulty making mounts using wood and while a 3d printer would have been ideal i am currently without one, i might revisit this at some point in the future  when i have one in my possession and make a camping bed chair v2 and remake all of the casing and designs with a better fit.

The electronics all work as intended and with the addition of a usb port it makes the set complete for taking camping

I hope you have enjoyed this project and look forward to my next project which will be posted in my blog

converting a pc power supply into a 12v + 5v bench power supply for the office

shane