Hey guys,

So with the news out of Italy around ventilator shortages leading to deaths and Boris Johnson's appeal for industry to manufacture these en-masse, I thought it would be a good project to see if I could build a ventilation apparatus. I'm figuring that in these days of closed borders and national interests likely to trump all else, New Zealand we will have no choice but to help ourselves if we need additional ventilators. This apparatus is super simple - the main parts are an air compressor with tank and solenoid valves I scavenged from an old dishwasher. It seems to work OK but I think I will need to add (at a minimum):

• Add in negative pressure on the deflate cycle (have an inline fan ready for this)
• Add in an air/water trap (if the air is going into a lung)
• Controls for the airflow and pressure
• Add in microcontroller with timings and relays to control the solenoid valves/negative pressure

If anyone is interested in joining to work on this please PM me, I'm in Mt. Wellington, Auckland. I'm going to work on it more this weekend.

Especially interested if anyone:

 

1. Has access to/knowledge of arduino/pi or some other microcontroller
2. Has 5v relays (mine are all 12v)
3. Has electronic valves spare

Thanks!