Projecta’s Good Design double could make touring electrics a whole lot simpler
Projecta’s Intelli-IQ range brings accessory switching together using single and multi-channel Smart Relays and the IQD2 2-inch Smart Display.
Projecta’s latest Intelli-Grid GEN III power management system and Intelli-IQ Smart Relays are designed to simplify the increasingly complicated electrical systems found in modern caravans, campers and heavily accessorised tow vehicles, bringing charging, monitoring and accessory control together in a much cleaner package. And, almost as an aside, somebody else seems to think Projecta is onto a good thing too — both products have just picked up Australian Good Design Awards for 2026.
Key Points
- Projecta Intelli-Grid GEN III combines charging, solar regulation, power distribution and monitoring in one integrated system.
- Projecta Intelli-IQ Smart Relays simplify accessory control in heavily equipped 4WDs and tow vehicles.
- Intelli-IQ can reduce the need for multiple switches, relays and complex accessory wiring.
- Intelli-Grid GEN III is designed for caravans, campers, motorhomes and touring canopies.
- Both systems are aimed at making modern 12V touring electrical systems easier to install, manage and monitor.
- Intelli-Grid GEN III and Intelli-IQ Smart Relays have both received 2026 Australian Good Design Awards.
It doesn’t take many accessories before a touring vehicle begins accumulating a serious amount of wiring
When touring electrics start getting complicated
There is a point in the development of almost every touring 4WD where things get slightly out of hand.
You start innocently enough with a UHF radio. Then you add a set of driving lights. A compressor seems sensible, followed by a fridge, canopy lights, camp lights, perhaps a rear work light and eventually an auxiliary battery system to prevent the whole lot from flattening the starter battery somewhere west of Birdsville.
Before long there are switches occupying every vacant piece of dashboard plastic, relays multiplying behind the kick panels and enough assorted wiring disappearing through the firewall to make an auto electrician sit down quietly and reconsider his life choices. In other words, welcome to the engine bay of my D-Max.
A quick look under the bonnet of my D-Max suggests I may have been part of the problem.
This is the problem Projecta appears to have been thinking about with its latest Intelli products.
The company has just picked up two Australian Good Design Awards for 2026, one for its Intelli-Grid GEN III 12V Power Management System and another for its Intelli-IQ Smart Relay range, both in the Product Design – Automotive and Transport category.
And while receiving a design award is unlikely to rank particularly highly on your list of priorities when the fridge is warm and the auxiliary battery is sitting at 11.8 volts, there is some genuinely useful thinking behind the products that earned them.
The Intelli-IQ system helps reduce wiring complexity in modern touring and work vehicle accessory installations.
Cleaning up the modern tow vehicle
Of the two products, Intelli-IQ is arguably the more interesting development for anyone building or upgrading a tow vehicle.
Traditional accessory wiring has worked perfectly well for decades. You have a switch, some wire, a relay and a fuse, and provided the person fitting everything knows what they are doing, electricity travels from one end to the other and something useful happens.
The trouble begins when you repeat that process ten or fifteen times.
Each new accessory brings another switch, another relay, more wiring and another potential connection to track down several years later when something stops working 700 kilometres from the nearest workshop.
It is automotive electrical archaeology.
A smarter way to control accessories
Projecta’s Intelli-IQ Smart Relays take a more modern approach by replacing a collection of conventional switching components with programmable electronic control.
There are single and multi-channel versions, allowing accessories to be grouped and controlled digitally rather than requiring a corresponding forest of physical switches across the dashboard.
That alone has obvious appeal in modern vehicles where manufacturers have thoughtfully provided approximately three square centimetres of usable dashboard space before filling everything else with airbags, touchscreens and buttons that disable things you never asked the vehicle to do in the first place.
More importantly, however, Intelli-IQ can do considerably more than simply switch an accessory on and off.
Depending on how the system is configured, the relays can perform timer, voltage-sensing, circuit-protection and low-voltage-disconnect functions. That opens up some useful possibilities for touring installations because electrical accessories can begin responding to conditions rather than relying entirely on the driver remembering what has been left switched on.
Anyone who has returned to a vehicle after lunch to discover a work light has spent the previous three hours attempting to illuminate an entire national park will immediately see the attraction.
Once I install the new Projecta Intelli-IQ system, I’ll finally be able to operate the flux capacitor from inside the cabin.
Fewer switches, more control
Paired with Projecta’s Intelli-IQ controller, accessories can be managed through the system rather than each requiring its own traditional dashboard switch.
Projecta also provides smartphone control and, where the vehicle supports it, basic Intelli-IQ functions can appear through Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.
That does not mean you should now hurtle down the highway playing with auxiliary lighting settings on a touchscreen like a teenager changing Spotify playlists. CarPlay and Android Auto deliberately restrict the available functions while driving.
What it does offer is a much cleaner way of managing an accessorised vehicle.
For someone building a touring ute, for example, the system could potentially bring auxiliary and work lighting, canopy accessories and other suitable electrical loads together under one control architecture rather than designing each circuit almost as an independent electrical system.
There are still wires, obviously.
Despite what various technology companies have been promising us since approximately 1987, nobody has yet invented electricity that travels magically from the battery to the rear work lights without requiring copper somewhere in between.
The advantage is in simplifying how all those circuits are switched, protected and controlled. And that becomes increasingly valuable as touring vehicles become more complicated.
The Intelli-Grid GEN III PM635 brings charging, solar management, distribution and monitoring together in one compact installation
Intelli-Grid tackles the other half of the problem
The Intelli-Grid GEN III approaches touring electrics from another direction.
Where Intelli-IQ is particularly relevant to controlling accessories in the tow vehicle, Intelli-Grid is better thought of as the power-management backbone for a caravan, motorhome, camper body or suitably equipped touring canopy.
A typical off-grid electrical installation can require an AC battery charger, DC-DC charger, solar regulator, load-control hardware, fuses, monitoring equipment and enough associated cabling to give the installation all the visual elegance of a bowl of dropped spaghetti.
GEN III combines several of those functions into one integrated platform.
The system can manage charging from mains power, the tow vehicle alternator and solar, while also handling power distribution and monitoring. Depending on the installation, that means the battery can be charging from the vehicle while travelling, from solar once camp is established and from mains power when you eventually surrender to temptation and book a powered site so somebody can run every appliance known to mankind simultaneously.
For caravan and camper manufacturers there are obvious installation advantages because fewer separate boxes need to be mounted and interconnected.
But owners benefit as well.
Every component and electrical connection eliminated from a system is one less thing taking up space and potentially giving trouble later.
That is particularly relevant in a canopy camper, where available wall space disappears remarkably quickly once you start adding batteries, chargers, fuse boxes, inverters, water pumps and the compulsory collection of Anderson plugs that appears to breed whenever nobody is watching.
The Projecta Intelli-IQ App gives users smartphone control of compatible 12V and 24V accessories.
It’s really about managing the whole system
One of the changes we’re seeing in modern touring is that electrical capacity alone is no longer the complete story.
A 300Ah or 400Ah lithium battery bank sounds impressive, but it is simply stored energy. What ultimately determines how useful it is involves how efficiently that energy is collected, controlled and consumed.
Solar needs to replace what you use during the day. The vehicle needs to be capable of contributing useful charging while travelling, particularly with modern smart-alternator vehicles. Loads need to be managed and, ideally, the owner needs to be able to see what the system is actually doing rather than relying on the traditional electrical diagnostic technique of staring suspiciously at the battery and hoping for the best.
That integrated approach is one reason Intelli-Grid GEN III attracted the attention of the Australian Good Design Awards judges.
The jury particularly recognised Projecta’s decision to consolidate traditionally separate power components and provide centralised monitoring and control, describing the system as a practical approach to simplifying off-grid power management.
The Smart Relays received similar recognition for reducing the collection of relays, switchgear and associated controls traditionally required in complex vehicle installations.
That makes the two awards rather complementary.
One product is tackling the increasingly complicated power system in the caravan, camper or canopy, while the other addresses the growing collection of accessories being attached to the vehicle pulling it.
Projecta Industrial Designer – Product Solutions, Richard Wong (l) and Projecta Head of Design – Product Solutions, Mark Finocchiaro, celebrate the brand’s Good Design Awards double.
Technology that should disappear into the background
Projecta Global Brand Manager Jake Smith says the company aims to develop technology that improves efficiency, convenience, and ease of use for the people actually using it.
That last point is probably the most important.
The best touring electrical system isn’t necessarily the one with the biggest touchscreen, the most impressive battery specification or sufficient flashing LEDs to make a passing aircraft attempt to land beside your campsite.
It is the one you largely stop thinking about.
You drive during the day and the batteries charge. Then you pull up and solar starts doing its job. You turn something on, and it works. You can see what is happening when you need to, and when something isn’t required anymore, the system doesn’t quietly spend the afternoon murdering your battery.
Electrical systems in caravans and touring vehicles are only going to become more sophisticated as lithium storage, solar, inverter-powered appliances and vehicle accessories continue to grow — particularly as more of us move away from gas and expect the battery bank to pick up the slack.
So perhaps the most significant thing about Projecta winning two Australian Good Design Awards isn’t the trophies themselves.
It is that someone appears to have recognised that adding more technology to a touring vehicle shouldn’t necessarily mean adding more complexity.
Because between the caravan, the tow vehicle, the solar panels, three battery chargers, six auxiliary lights, two fridges and the coffee machine that apparently became an essential piece of survival equipment sometime around 2019, we already have quite enough to think about.
