My desk has open drawers on each side. In the right side drawer, there are my DSL model and my WiFi router. In the left side drawer, there are a Synology NAS, a gigabit switch, a GuruPlug Linux server doing SNMP management tasks and some USB drives.

Here, in Bordeaux, it can be really warn in summer and as I my office is under the roof in the house (no AC), temperature can come close to 35°C. Even if the drawers are open, as there is no air circulation, temperature can come close to 45°C. Inside the electronic stuff, it is even worse and I had many downtime last August.

I drilled two 8cm large holes behind both drawers, put fancy grids and placed silent computer fans to move warm air out of the drawers.

I am using DS18S20 thermometers to read air temperature in each drawer and a TB6612FNG dual motor controller to start fans if temperature is over a value I set up. One TB6612FNG pilots fans in each drawer so they can be started separately.

So now I am ready for global warming ;-)

This is not the project of the year but It was fun to do over a week-end and should really help next summer. May be I will add a http client to post values to Pachube to track values... and give the mbed (too powerful for such a small job) some tasks to do.

Some pictures :

Right drawer with the two openings and protection grids in the background.

Same on left drawer.

Grid behind the drawer for warm air exit.

Super silent PC fans