Glad to hear someone is interested in this sort of project. I was a little surprised nobody seemed interested. I can tell you, I think getting the wine cooler and taking it apart and experimenting with that would be the way to go. You will save money at that price. I think you will find the wine cooler does use a finned “cool sink” on the cool side and a fan so the air is circulated around the box. It is designed to pump the heat from the air in the box to the outside, so you have to move a lot of air around. With my design, I just used a bar of aluminum that is (I’m guessing because I didn’t measure it) I think it’s about four inches by eleven and a half and a quarter inch thick. By not having a fan on the cool side, I am just cooling a spot rather than trying to turn the whole cage into a cooler. I am still experimenting, but have got it to provide just a slightly cooler area, like four degrees. I have created a hide by walling up some Aspen bedding to try and see what that would do, and it does provide a nice cooler spot there without cooling too much. I have thought about just mounting the whole wine cooler next to a cage and providing a connecting tube or something too. The nice thing about the wine cooler is it has the control board, which is a million little diodes and capacitors and all that stuff I barely understand. My wine cooler has a light, temp controller and all that, which would be more money to figure some system out.

I got the whole peltier, hot sink, fan and cold side aluminum (not including the bar I attached) from Carl’s Electronics, you can find them online easy. http://www.electronickits.com/

I hope you try some things and share the results in the forum. Good luck!

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