The Crowd Supply Programmable-Air is a hardware toolkit that allows you to inflate and deflate objects. It has everything you need to start playing with pneumatics and inflatables including high pressure and vacuum pumps, valves, and a pressure sensor on board. Pneumatics opens up a world of possibilities for a maker to explore:
- Make a vacuum pick and place machine
- Blow up a balloon and have it’s size represent data
- Make a soft robot walk
- Use a syringe as a linear actuator
Programmable-Air is packed with:
- Two compressor/vacuum pumps
- Three pneumatic valves
- A pressure sensor
- It’s all controllable via an onboard Arduino Nano.
The output from Programmable-Air is a single tube that goes into your soft robot or pneumatic actuator. By controlling the motors and valves, you can push air in or out of the actuator, or let it exchange air with the atmosphere. All while you get feedback about the state of the actuator through the pressure sensor.
The Programmable-Air library makes it easy to control the valves and pumps. Simple functions like blow(), suck(), vent(), and readPressure() cover most of the basic use cases. There is detailed documentation on the project GitHub.
Includes:
- The Programmable-Air board, itself
- Extra silicone tubing
- Extra pneumatic connectors
- Programable-Air sticker
All you need to kick-off is an Arduino Nano, power supply (12 V, 1.5 A barrel jack), and a USB cord.
Features:
- Based on Arduino Nano (ATMega328P), so works by default with most Arduino libraries
- Ready to go right out of the box, no need to purchase additional power supplies/cables/pumps/tubes/valves.
- Pneumatics - full channel control, i.e. high pressure through atmospheric pressure to vacuum output in the same tube.
- Max pressure: 0.5 atmosphere (7.5 PSI / 50 kPa)
- Min Pressure: -0.5 atmosphere (-7.5 PSI / -50 kPa)
- Flow rate: 2 liters per minute (per motor)
- Power - 12 V, 1.2 A from a barrel jack
- Grove I²C connector to easily add sensors (not pictured, but added in v0.6)
- Expandable for adding valves/sensors
- Open source all the way!
- GitHub
- Guides
- Tutorials
- The color-coded buttons on the board are meant
for easy identification when following tutorials.