Hi community!
I wanted to share something I made over the winter to help out my dog. He wears boots to protect his feet from the salt they use on the roads here, and when he comes back, his wet boots need to be dried out. Since they’re expensive (like more than I spend on my own boots) and leather, drying them on the radiator or in the dryer causes the leather to crack and dry out.
I designed and printed a boot dryer based around common PC fan sizes (80 and/or 120mm), and used a Wemos D1 Mini to control it. There are two DHT sensors on it, so when it detects a wet boot, it’ll run the dryer. It really didn’t need to be connected to Home Assistant, but with ESPHome, it was faster to build it connected than to write something from scratch.
I’ve posted the files on Thingiverse and the ESPHome code in a Gist. The wiring is very simple, but I used a couple of 2n7000 logic-level mosfets to run the fans. There’s a simple schematic attached to the thingiverse files.
It works pretty well, and I’ve already built a second one for my kids’ gloves and mitts. Very low power, it’s just a place to keep the boots, and I don’t have to think about if they’re wet or not.
Enjoy!
