Progress update: ‘Plastic Waste’ part 2

Hello!

So the past week I was learning Arduino on the web, researching on the inflatables and as well as watching Arduino tutorials.
It’s been a challenge to get started as I haven’t been exposed to Arduino yet. Thankfully, the online tutorials were quite helpful and I managed to piece everything (correctly). Also, with the help of Prof LPD, I was able to solve some questions that I was facing before.

Questions like:

  1. How many fans should I buy?
  2. What is the scale of this installation?
  3. Should I buy DC or AC fans?
  4. Budgeting
  5. Do I need to connect 1 pair of fans for each plastic bag or there is another way?

Throughout the weekend, I did some experiments at home. These are the documentation:

 

Using a circular 12V DC fan, I was able to inflate and deflate a relatively bigger plastic bag easily.

I proceeded with trying another pair of 12V AC fans that are square in shape, to see whether the fan power is the same.
I realised that the fan speed is not as powerful as the circular pair of fans.

 

Arduino

Using Arduino, a power supply, and a darrington array we can change which fan is rotating and the direction of the air flow. By placing two fans back to back and placing a bag over one end, we are able to both push air into the bag and inflate as well as pulling air out of the bag to deflate it.

Arduino Setup

This is my Arduino setup for one pair of fans.

Really excited to do my end product now!

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