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I built a little robot that props open a door when the av cabinet gets too hot. It has a temperature sensor, two fans and a linear actuator. It even has a small webui so I can manually enable/disable cooling. Been working for several years.

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Ha, that's a great idea. I have a smart exhaust fan in the av closet, but it still lacks air circulation, so opening the door slightly every now and then (particularly when there's high load / heat dissipation) could be a nice extra feature.

How did you mount the linear actuator? I need to retain the ability to manually open/close the door. Maybe using a magnetic latch.

Some one else used a stepper motor actuated cam to open a dishwasher, could be used instead of a linear actuator: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/diy-automatic-opener-f...

The door hinge has a spring that will self close if it’s not opened too far. I mounted the actuator so it pushes the door open just behind that point. That turned out to be simplest solution.

Love it, will do the same. Thank you for the inspiration!

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