Imagine I'm breathing through a wide straw/tube in my mouth. At the far end of the straw is a resistance mechanism. I want it to be that as I exhale there is no resistance, but as soon as I start to inhale I'm met with strong resistance so that little or no air can pass. But over the course of a few seconds, I want that resistance to drop to zero (either to drop smoothly or to "pop" to little or no resistance after a couple seconds). Furthermore, I want the timing of that resistance fall off or "pop" to be independent of how hard I am inhaling -- either a strong or a light inhale will produce the same result: strong resistance dropping (or popping) to little or no resistance over a couple seconds.
I'm trying to think of a way to do this purely mechanically.
Three mechanical timing mechanisms come to mind:
- the balance wheel of a mechanical watch (which causes ticking at a constant rate regardless of how tightly the watch's mainspring is wound)
- an hourglass (the concept here is that an inhale of any strength would flip the hourglass, and the number of grains fallen would represent the decreasing air resistance)
- a hydraulic door-closing mechanism (where the door closes at roughly the same speed regardless of the pressure applied)
All of those are just "inspirations" in the sense that they seem like they can be used as the basis for a mechanical timing mechanism, but I don't know how to turn any of them into a concrete design for this purpose. Any suggestions welcome.