Bypassing fridge thermostat

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optimal_pizza

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Picked up a Sanyo fridge off CL to use as my fermentation chamber. Also picked up an Inkbird-308 temp controller. Doing some test runs it seems like the fridge thermostat is getting in the way of the Inkbird controlling the temp. I was hoping to bypass the thermostat so the Inkbird has full control. Here's the wiring diagram on the back. What cables do I want to cut? The lamp inside the unit doesn't work so I don't care about that portion of the wiring. Thanks!
fridge.jpg
 
The simplest way to go is to jumper the YELLOW wire to the GRAY wire which will remove the influence of the oem thermostat from the control loop, then just plug the fridge into the 308 Cold receptacle. That will also leave the door switch/light semi-functional if you ever decide to fix that.
That's also the easiest to reverse - you could even run the jumper through a hunky toggle switch (I'd go with a 20A if this is a full size fridge)...

Cheers!
 
Here's what I did:

Find the thermostat / temperature probe inside the fridge. Mine was behind the back wall. It took 3 or 5 screws to undo, and it was obvious that it was the thermostat probe on a long wire. I think it might have been near the fan on the inside back wall.

Now that you have the temperature probe, go to ebay and get something like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/5v-portabl...pad-carbon-fiber-heating-pad-Pip/173238963552

In case the link doesn't work in the future, it's a $0.99 5 volt (usb plug) carbon fiber hand warmer pad. Actually, the one I got a couple of years ago came as a two-pack, and the pad was smaller, I think. So I've got a backup in case something happens.

Put the hand warmer and temperature probe in a little box (battery box, film canister, etc. - whatever will fit them).

Find an old, low-power USB charger. The ones for the new devices can let a device draw 2 or 3 amps. I think the old one I found was rated for 500 mA. Not useful for modern phones, but perfect for this application.

Plug in the hand warmer on its own plug, and plug in the fridge to your inkbird. The warmer will fool the fridge into thinking it's very warm (100+ F), rendering its internal thermostat useless - it will be in "always on" mode trying to get colder but never getting there.

That's the solution I came up with for my beverage center, because whenever the inkbird would cut power it would reset itself to a setpoint of 50F or something like that. Now it will get as cold as the inkbird will tell it to. The thermostat on the beverage center would only allow a setpoint of 40F at the coldest, but with this setup I got it down to freezing (accidentally) one time.
 

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