Factors that determine the motion of a silicon actuator
I figured an easy way to do this would be to connect the device to 2 clown balloons, not the balloons of a clown but more like the long ones they would use to make balloon animals. Then I could attach them to the sides of a large piece of paper and then secure them to the bottom of my window. Then I could attach a large piece of paper that has a piece of personal information on it. I think like a phone number could be the right amount of appropriate. The goal now being that the balloons will slowly inflate unless I get my 750 words typed out.
I settled on a joke doll. The first thing I wanted to check was how fast it could inflate it.
My initial concerns here were how was that I didn’t know if the programmable air was going to be strong enough to pump the doll up but it seemed to have worked!
Next up was the deflate. It didn’t work as well as I thought. I kept getting the purple lights which meant that the sucking pressure was too high and it wasn’t able to deflate the doll properly.
Doesn’t look super clear here but they were purple…I swear.
Then I realized it was because of the safety flap on the inflatable!! It stops the air from escaping so it doesn’t deflate super quickly. However for my purpose it made it a lot easier for me to just remove it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQoV6w_nuSQ
I watched this video and so I figured the easiest way to get it to deflate was to just make a hole in the safety valve.
It inflates over the day! Really slowly! When we reach a known pressure value we can deflate to our ideal inflated state.