Arduino & air pressure & iphone?

Projects General Guidance
1

I wanted to kick start a little project,

it involves air pressure switches for a compressor and 4x individual airbags.

at the moment each bag can be inflated and DE-flated with a rocker type switch using digital valves.

What i wanted to know is if i can replace this with the following scenario;

1x Arduino Board
1x WiFi shield or Bluetooth Board (not sure which is best yet... i am thinking Bluetooth)
1x iPhone & app to communicate via Bluetooth to raise/lower the air pressure and perhaps monitor pressure in each bag, and have 3 preset buttons to set the pressure accordingly.

whats my best approach to this? and i guess i will need some sort of digital pressure sender unit to read the pressure and send the data to the board which is then displayed on the iPhone.

i am not even sure the iPhone is best / easiest way yet, i can do it with an LCD screen but i like the idea of Bluetooth iPhone connectivity.

any help on this project would be great.

2

That sounds feasible.

What sort of pressure range and resolution do you need?

3

i like the idea of Bluetooth iPhone connectivity

Many people like the idea of Bluetooth iPhone connectivity, unfortunately Apple doesn't expose the Bluetooth serial protocol in their API, which is why you don't see anything that uses Bluetooth for data transfer on an iPhone.

Apparently, iOS 5/6 on a iPhone 4S or 5 can send/receive data using the Bluetooth Low-Energy protocol, but you need a BLE compatible bluetooth module - See http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rowdyrobot/arduino-ble-shield-connecting-the-ios-and-the-ardu?ref=card.

4

PeterH:
That sounds feasible.

What sort of pressure range and resolution do you need?

i think were talking around 160psi the kit hasnt arrived yet so i will know more specifics when it lands, just planning ahead :roll_eyes:

5

ok i decided to make my project a little more simple.

arduino to control 2x valves to switch 12v on or off. each valve already has 12v to it i just need to make the Arduino as a switch.

Now i have NOOOO idea how to program an app for iphone so i have 2 options:

  1. use a wifi shield with a small http server? and load the ip address from iphone to control the valves with simple click buttons?

  2. get someone to program something for me on iphone to control said arduino with wifi shield.

Can anyone help me out, i can figure out the wiring and board stuff, just not the programming side so well.

6
  1. use a wifi shield with a small http server?

Is this project going to be mobile? You'll need to make sure that the wifi shield you choose supports ad-hoc networking. Most only connect to an existing wi-fi network.