Pneumatic control with an Arduino

Thu, Sep 17 2009
Posted by Jonathan Oxer A couple of weeks ago Steve Outtrim sent me a link to a story about a rather cool kitchen company called Anvil Motion, and from the moment I saw the demo video I knew I had to have a go at doing something like that myself. The sysadmin here at IVT, Dave Hunter, used to work for SMC so he has a lot of random pneumatic data stored in his skull and we started plotting how to make it work. The result is that I've just taken delivery of a few rather snazzy pieces of hardware including these: The cylinder at the top is a 20mm bore, 80mm travel dual-action (ie: extend and retract) unit fitted with adjustable reed-switch travel limit sensors. Just below and to the right is a solenoid valve with an inlet (bottom right) and two outlets (top left). It also has a pair of noise-reducing fittings on the vents. With the solenoid inactive air is directed out one outlet: solenoid active switches it to the other outlet. It's a 24V unit so controlling all this shiny hardware (*real* hardware, not just computer "hardware"!) will be a piece of cake for an Arduino and a relay. So the plan is to combine this with something like a one of these infrared proximity sensors from Sparkfun so that I can wave my hand near a kitchen cabinet and have the door magically open. If I can get that working I'll have a go at doing drawers as well. The big trick, though, is going to be putting this hardware aside and not touching it again until *after* Practical Arduino is finished! Always so many projects, so little time.