I wonder if I can hack this by soldering wires to the contacts of the encoder and touch two wires together to make it register a rotary step.

Yes, but there’s a spesific order which you need to touch the wires so that it registers movement in one way or the other. You could also solder wires to another rotary encoder and use that (assuming of course that the new part electrically matches the old part).

Spraying contact cleaner in the case might work too while rotating the knob. Just drowning it in something most likely won’t help much, but if you can get the encoder off the board then you can sink it in a isopropyl alcohol and rotate the knob around. Just let it dry properly before putting it back together, contacts may spark when used and if there’s alcohol vapours around that might cause some new and exciting problems.

Doesn’t hurt to ask. Not related to anything electrical, but “a while” ago my office chair mechanism started to make really annoying noise, metal grinding on metal screech. It was at least 6 years old at that point and isn’t high-end model by any stretch. I sent email to manufacturer if they could point me to a retailer who sells spare parts but instead they just shipped me a new mechanism for free, no questions asked.

Obviously if the model isn’t available anymore it might be a different story, but if it’s still on the market they might give a surprise.

You can get conductive epoxy, but I think it’s more expensive than a new controller. But maybe something like that, graphite or iron dust mixed in epoxy? That would most likely need some trial and error to get proper mixture.

Good point, will do. Currently I’m just focusing just on the lights themselves. Dimming even with a off-the-shelf constant current module would most likely be enough so I could set it once for suitable level and leave it at that, but of course it would be nice to extend into more adaptive lights while I’m working on it anyways.

Other what I’ve been thinking is if I should go full RGBW and just set colour temperature and intensity as a whole to something nice, but that would mean more wires and more complex setup as a whole and I’m not too sure if that’s worth the effort. It’s sauna after all, not a disco.

But i don’t know whether these are at all that important, so i don’t know if it’s worth it.

Well, they’re not for decoration either. The board is designed for that component to be in place. But, as already mentioned, there’s reundancy, so it might not be an immediate problem, or not a problem at all. It might have affect on how long the board lasts, it might be a problem with different components in place, cause stability issues under certain kinds of load and so on.

For OP, if it works, I’d keep just using it. Replacing the component would be the best option, but if you don’t have experience on soldering (or know someone who does) I’d skip that. Looks like the pads are at least damaged if not missing altogether and replacing that isn’t really trivial job. Not impossible either by any stretch, but not something you’d want to do for your first soldering job.

Cascading failure could, at least in theory, damage more expensive components on the machine, but that’s pretty unlikely. And it won’t catch on fire because of that.

There’s automotive plugs which use more or less standard spade connectors which you can wire yourself and they can easily achieve 10A and things like relay sockets can manage 40A or more. JAE is one of the brands manufacturing all kinds of connectors, with and without panel connectors, but there’s a ton of manufacturers around. I suppose on marine stuff you can find connectors like that too.

But if it’s for a LED strip and you don’t need to constantly move them around, I’d suggest using a dirt cheap spade connectors with color coding (reverse male/female connectors on the live one so it’s physically impossible to connect led strip in reverse polarity). Or even cheaper, use screw terminals and be extra careful when wiring the strip in.

And for the dupont-style connector commonly seen on LED strips, 10A feels like quite optimistic value. Obviously a LED strip can pull 10A and many times that, but quickly googled ballpark estimation for 2,5m 10A led strip calls for 2,5mm² wiring all the way trough and your cheap flexible LED PCB from amazon/ebay is pretty far from that. But that depends heavily on what you actually have and if you’ve measured 6A then it’s pretty reasonable to have the rest of the setup to manage 10A.

12V 200A relays are pretty easy to find (I wouldn’t get one from alibaba tho), but that much current requires quite beefy wiring as well. Personally I’d review options to place auxiliary batteries in parallel since that would simplify wiring and the whole system a bit, but as I don’t know how your camper is built it can be tricky or you need to sacrifice storage space somewhere.

And as you’re placing a battery at the same space where people stay be careful with hydrogen. Charging lead acid battery produces hydrogen and in the worst case scenario, specially if you have a gas stove be dangerous if not lethal.

So you’ll have total of 3 batteries at the car? One for engine, existing utility battery and now you’re planning to install another utility battery, right? That should work. I don’t know how much current you’re pulling from the battery, so it’s difficult to recommend anything. Common bosh switching relay is something you can find from pretty much every car part store for ~5€, but I think they’re rated only up to 40A and I wouldn’t push them to the limit. Check your inverter datasheet how much current it can draw and preferably get a relay which can do double the maximum rating for longevity and stability.

Get a switching relay or one normally closed and another normally open one. That way there’s no paraller connection at all. Connecting two batteries together with different voltage levels causes a huge current spike, think jump starting a car and how thick those cables are. Arcing will happen on the relay contacts no matter how you switch it if there’s load connected.

And since you’re not talking about a trailer, is one of the batteries for the car itself? Since if you’re planning to use the secondary battery as a car battery too you need very heavy wiring to give starter enough amps to run plus running that over a relay is a whole another beast to manage since starter motor can pull hundreds of amps momentarily.

You want to put the batteries in parallel, so you’ll have double the capacity. Installing them in a series would increase voltage and most likely damage something (mixing 12V systems with 24V battery pack doesn’t really work). Increasing capacity with another battery can cause strain on charger components, so make sure they’re beefy enough or at least have proper protection against overcurrent.

People are correct that you should use the same capacity batteries, preferably the same make/model and age. Mixing batteries can cause problems where one battery drains faster and other(s) start to charge the lower level one so you’ll have less useful amp-hours and that degrades batteries faster.

Switching batteries with a relay or a switch is possible, but you need quite big and good quality relays/contactors for that as current can be pretty high which can cause arcing and even weld contacts together eventually. With proper parts it’s a safe way of doing it, but personally I’d just get two batteries in parallel since there’s fewer components to malfunction and adding complexity with arduino+contactor doesn’t save that much money, specially if you place any value for your time (which of course isn’t necessary, tinkering itself is often worth the time spent).

But the end goal would be to only use that to build the network, connecting modes together through $VARIOUS_MEANS, and implement the Yggdrasil code right at the network card level.

So, eventually it might be a (new) internet with encryption (and blackjack+hookers?). I already can connect my house trough neighbours connection (with limitations like NAT of course), but once ipv6 is available everywhere I don’t immediately see if Yggdrasil offers anything else than protocol level encryption. Current internet is a mesh network after all, just built a bit differently and more controlled manner.

Interesting concept anyways, maybe it’ll catch up some day.

In short: No.

Assuming that I understood correctly with a quick reading that’s creating a whole another network on top of existing internet and requires raw bandwidth to function at all.

Various mesh-networks have been around for quite a long time to solve the ‘last mile’ issue on poor areas. That requires pretty dense population to actually work, but at least couple of years ago there’s been some moderately successful projects. I haven’t followed those in years, so I don’t know what’s the current status and that’s very different from what Yggdrasil is doing.