These instructional YouTube videos will be posted weekly, or thereabouts on the design and building of this automated dust manifold system. I'm working my way through it and thought it might be fun to document so that you can learn along with me. 

OK, let's break it down:

1. Current sensor: Starting at the beginning of the chain, when you turn on a power tool, you want to sense that it's on in order to have the dust collector switch ports to that tool. That is, if you want to entirely automate the process.

2. Wirelessly transmit the tool number to the dust manifold.

3. Receive tool number and use stepper motor to turn the dust collector selector disk to the right port.

4. Turn on the vacuum.

5. Sense when tool is turned off and turn off vacuum.

We'll cover in this series of videos the design process in Fusion 360 of the dust collector pictured here and then all of the subsequent details of making the process above actually happen in a reliable way.

Please see the video series on YouTube!