My new Voltage controller :)

[PaulCa]

Mine went bang. Wired as yours was. I gathered the voltmeter runs off 230V so I left it on the mains in side. Red to brown, black to blue.

Looks like a capacitor exploded in the voltmeter. Several of the reviews on Amazon say the same thing happened to them. The seller on ebay has cleared all his items for sale. Me thinks there is a duff batch of these out there. Be warned.

The worst bit is, I was testing it with something much lower current than a boiler, the living room uplighter and I had the box sitting on the carpet, which now has a burn mark with exactly the same pattern as the ventilation holes in the box. It's a rented apartment and as a smoker I was proud to have not managed to burn the carpet... until now. That will cost me a fair chunk of my deposit when I move out

 

[LeithR]

Quick Q for Cyclops,

In your picy above it looks like the blue (Neutral) wire goes thru the toroidal transformer which doesn't match the diagram provided by bunkerbrewer which shows the transformer round the live (Brown) wire.

Can you offer a better picy with the wiring a bit more exposed so we can see where it goes please.

Thanks

 

[PaulCa]

I feel I should point out, my mishap was obviously not caused in any way by Cyclops post. I honestly appreciate his work.

The actual boiler controller continued to function and I just completed my first all grain with only losing about 3 litres in the boil due to the controller keep the rolling boil to a minimum enough to put the lid mostly on.

I've been a consumer of cheap chinese stuff for a while now, I'm not at all surprised by the voltmeter complete failure. Been there before. They are just so cheap and they seem to have exactly what you need while UK and European sellers are at least 6 months behind the times and usually three times as expensive.... some even just resell the cheap chinese stuff. You get what you pay for.

In the radio controlled hobby, I used to buy 2 of something from china on the hope one would work and it was usually still way cheaper.

 

[boab42stout]

brilliant idea looks like a fun project