Quick Hack, Timing an Air Pump with Arduino

Yesterday morning I saw a call for help by Maud Vanhauwaert, Antwerp’s city poet. For a new city poem / installation she was looking for a solution to time inflation and deflation of big letters, spelling the word “Macht” (which translates to “Power” in English).

On the shelf timers didn’t work for the timing she had in mind. I attended high school with Maud, saw her call for help on Facebook and started hacking together a solution for her with an Arduino and a relay. It needed to happen quickly (the installation went live today), so I shipped it to her in a plastic box from some take away food. One side of the box plugs into the mains outlet, the other side is a mains socket which is controlled by the relay and Arduino.

Fun to do this quick hack for her. Sometimes cool projects don’t need complex solutions (timing a relay with an Arduino is hardly rocket science ;-)) The installation itself is far more impressive than my Arduino box, check it out on Youtube: