Digital Pressure Regulator
We built a digital pressure regulator for precise pneumatic control for microfluidics and bioprinting applications. The system is based off of the SMC ITV0031 electro-pneumatic regulators with a pressure range of 1 to 500 kPa (step resolution of 0.12 kPa). An electronic controller was designed to generate the 0-10 V signal necessary to control the pressure regulator. The controller consisted of a Teensy 3.5 development board (Arduino compatible), MCP4725 12-bit digital to analog conversion (DAC) chipset and LM324 Op-amp for voltage amplification.
A mobile app interface was created to easily control and set the pressure. The app was written using Blynk and is compatible with iOS and Android devices. The controller communicates with mobile devices via wifi communication. The software needs to be programmed and calibrated before use.
The project is open-source. The schematics for the controller board are available here and the arduino code is available here. You will need to download the Aduino IDE and Teensyduino along with the following Arduino libraries: Blynk Library and Time Library. The code will also need to be edited to update the Auth token and wifi credentials.