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Welcome to the NewAir (121E) Wine Cooler! Today I'll be going over some the electronic guts of this small 'wineador' and show where to tap into it with your own microcontroller. Since manufacturers do crazy things and resellers rarely care why, each unit could be different. However, I have two 181Es and one 121E and they all have the same components. I've even seen similar controller modules in non-NewAir units so they may be just as hackable.

WARNING: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING YOU DO TO YOUR WINEADOR, OR THE STICKS THEREIN! I have done all of this work on a spare unit, I'd suggest you do the same.

Firstly, let's go over some of the primary parts that allow your wineador to keep your sticks safe.

The Thermo-Electric Cooler (TEC) The TEC is a device that transfers heat when electricity is applied. You can find more about them at Wikipedia, but the ELI5 is that when power is supplied to the TEC, one side gets hotter, the other side colder. The cold side is inside the main cavity and sealed off from the hot side and both have a fan to move the air around the fins of the TEC.

Here we have the exterior fan sitting on the 'hot' side fins of the TEC. And here we have the interior fan, with the blue wired thermistor mounted to the grill.

Temperature with a thermistor A thermistor is a type of resistor with a value correlated to its temperature. The NewAir thermistor is 10K and NTC, or negative temperature coefficient; the resistance decreases with temperature. I won't bore you with talk of the Steinhart-Hart equation, but I did profile this particular thermistor and I have the coefficients needed for the equation. Hit me up if you're interested in them.

With these two main components, you have what you need to maintain the temperature in the inside cavity. When the temp gets too high, you turn on the TEC/fan, and turn it off when it gets low enough. It could be possible to also heat the cavity by reversing the polarity of the voltage supplied to the TEC. However, I'm not sure this is possible without seriously modifying the power supply portion of the rear PCB board (so I'm just sticking to cooling for now).

The LED is mounted on a small PCB in the top and appears to have a buck converter. I've not been able to test with it much since in my application the LED is pretty useless. It might not be, such as replacing it with a DHT22 sensor, so it's important to know that it is accessbile from outside the unit.

And this is all that you'll see until we bust out the screwdriver. If you're following along, contemplating seeing for yourself, or otherwise looking to cause general nerdery on your wineador, you do so at your own risk. I'm not responsible for brittle sticks, modly dog-rockets or any other mishap that might befall your collection, caused by the use of the following information.

The last part of this knowledge drop is an abbreviation of a more complete tutorial, called "The Hackendor", that I'm working on. If you want more detail on something in particular, drop a comment or send a message and I'll help as best I can.

The top hinge cover pops off pretty easily and reveals two blue wires, and one each of red, black, white, and yellow. Cutting off the shrink wrap shows header sockets and pins, hoozah! Here's what each wire does:

Blue - These are for the thermistor
Red - 8v power for the front controller module Black - Ground for controller module White - TEC, sink to ground to turn on Yellow - LED, sink to ground to turn on

From this point you can now connect the thermistor wires to an ADC and ground on a microcontroller and read its value (this is where the equation coeffecients come into play).

The 8 volts provided to the controller module does not have enough current to drive anything substantial so in my case I'm only using the ground.

Connecting the TEC and LED wires to ground will turn on their respective devices. While I've had no problem sinking the power through my microcontroller, make sure yours can handle it. It's really hard to put the smoke back in...

In order to come to all this wonderful info, I had to get at the front controller module. First, you have to remove the magnetized door seal, which just pulls out of a groove along the inside door edge. Once off, there will be three screws to remove, holding the plastic face of the controller module. The wires in the hinge go right into the side of the PCB and also have header sockets making it very easy to remove.

As for the controller module itself, I've not been able, nor willing, to figure it out. It came in very handy when I was testing out my temperature readings, but there is very little information out on the web for the chip being used. The double-digit seven-segment display is a common one but would require two drivers, leading me to believe the chip is mass produced for this purpose. I did find a Chinese site that seemed to idenify it, but I can't read Chinese and Google Translate poops the bed with it.

If you have any more information on the controller module board, or the TEC itself, or if by some by-golly chance you have the spec sheet on the thermistor, please let me know! I'll be posting code and hardware designs for my Hackendor soon, so stay tuned!