How to control 30 or more solenoid valves with computer

[Fides]

Hi,

I'm an IT student working on my graduation project, don't know anything about electronics.

The electronics engineer who is helping me building the project said that relays are not fast enough to control the solenoid valves simultaneously, and it needed a control box. I don't know what a control box is or how to search the net for it, any help?

Thank you

[Fides]

If there is any thing else that can replace this box it will be helpful too, I want to make a Water Printer, valves should be controlled and synchronized by computer to print images, but this can't be done using relays because they're not fast enought, so if there is some thing else that can replace relays and be fast to accomplish the printing task I'm open to suggestions.

This is a water printer video:

http://www.wimp.com/waterprinter/

[johnsold]

There was a LabVIEW controlled water printer at NIWeek two or three years ago.  Check through the NIWeek archives to see if you can find information on the equipment they used.

Lynn

[John_P1]

Do you have a spec sheet for the valves?  How much voltage/current is required to turn the valve on or off?  How quickly can the valves be toggled?

How many pixels wide is your water printer?  30 "or more" is kind of open-ended, but many NI devices have 32 digital lines on them so maybe one of these would fit your requirement?  If you need more lines there are options for that as well.

Do you have a budget?

Sounds like a fun project--not sure what it has to do with IT.  I guess you'll probably be writing the software to control the output of the water printer?  What is the responsibility of the electronics engineer if not to design a hardware solution to control the water printer?

Best Regards,

[Jason-H]

Are you looking for something NI specific? Some suggestions were made in this post for controlling solenoid's directly.