Alexa-Powered Dust Collection

Woodshop dust collection is essential not just to keep your shop clean, but breathing in fine wood dust particles can also be quite hazardous over time. Jay and Jaimie Grenier of Wicked Makers do have a dust collection system, but because of its location they were forced to reach around other equipment to turn it on. Rather than buying a commercial system or rearranging equipment, they decided to go the more interesting route, and make their system respond to voice commands via a custom Amazon Alexa setup.

In their system, an off-the-shelf Echo Dot takes commands, then uses Sinric to pass data along to their custom smart switch. The assembly uses a NodeMCU ESP8266 board to power a 220V/30amp relay to activate the dust collector, and everything is encased in a conduit box that would normally house four outlets. This gives it enough space for wiring, and they used nylon screws in order to electrically isolate components inside.

To give it a nice finishing touch, their skull logo was 3D-printed for the front, and Jamie even gave it a nice dry brush paint job to make it look stylishly weathered. You can see the whole build process in the video below, or check out GitHub for more information on Sinric.