Dry and Mighty Toothbrush Smart Cup

myminifactory

Dry and Mighty Toothbrush Smart Cup - addresses a global issue: wet, slimy toothbrush cups. No one wants a soggy cup with icky water inside. After scouring the internet, I found no suitable solution, so I created my own. I designed the Dry and Mighty Toothbrush Smart Cup using cutting-edge technology (3D printing, Arduino, and software) to eradicate wet toothbrush cups one bathroom at a time. I use mine daily. Dry and Mighty employs a simple accelerometer to control a fan, ensuring your toothbrush remains dry and less prone to muck buildup in the cup. All parts are 3D printed without support. While using support might yield a slightly nicer print, I achieved impressive results without it. On November 5, 2019, I uploaded a V3 of the cup itself with smaller "windows" to prevent the base of the toothbrush from escaping. The core design of Dry and Mighty is built around four principles: 1) utilize existing household items, 2) leverage an accelerometer, 3) use an Arduino Micro as the main controller, and 4) rely on a generic USB power supply. An accelerometer (MCU6050 module) senses motion/vibrations in the cup, triggering the fan to dry your toothbrush or razor when it detects movement. The Arduino Micro serves as the brain, tied to the accelerometer, controlling the fan's operation. To notify users that Dry and Mighty is active, an optional LED indicator is used. This feature lets you know when the device is drying your teeth cleaning or shaving tool. Dry and Mighty utilizes a quiet muffin fan (Easycargo pi fan model EDL3007S05) to blow air onto wet teeth or other body cleaning devices. The 5V fan draws 0.12A of power. A small fan controller is crafted from spare parts, providing an alternative to using a solenoid if you prefer not to build your own. A MOSFET (Vishay Si2318DS) buffers the Arduino I/O pin, while a flyback diode protects the MOSFET from inductive load. The fan acts as an inductive load, necessitating the use of a diode to prevent damage when switching on/off. The 1N4148 diode meets the specs for the load, ensuring safe operation. Basic MPU6050 reference code is used to read accelerometer data, calculating the change in acceleration. This value serves as the threshold to turn on the fan, stored in the file toothbrush.h (ACCEL_SQR_ERR_THRESHOLD). The fan's on-time duration is also defined in toothbrush.h (FAN_ON_TIME), allowing users to adjust the setting to suit their needs. Sample code is available, with a default setting of 30 minutes that resets if additional movement is detected. Myminifactory restricts sharing sample reference code, but I hope they will lift this restriction after the design competition concludes.