Series Digital Delay Pulse Generator

Greetings:

I am currently designing a thin film deposition reactor that utilizes multiple solenoid valves that pulse gasses into a vacuum chamber. The way the reactor works is that you have two independent gases that are introduced into the chamber one gas at a time. For clarity lets assume we have two gasses A and B:

  1. We introduce gas A into the chamber by pulsing on it's solenoid valve (24 V) for exactly 1 second then pulsing off.
  2. We wait for gas A to do its magic.
  3. We introduce gas B into the chamber by pulsing on it's solenoid valve (24 V) for exactly 2 seconds then pulsing off.
  4. We repeat this process by pulsing A then B for X-times

In this simplistic case we only have two gases and two valves, however in my reactor we have multiple valves (8) that each have a different pulse time. To be clear the pulse time is important because I want to time average data over all the pulses for a specific valve. Because the pulse times need to be the same repeatedly I wanted to go a Digital Delay Pulse Generator rout such as this one, http://www.quantumcomposers.com/products/pulse-generator/9600-series where each channel can be programmed for a specific pulse width for a specific valve and externally triggered. This generator is however expensive, ~3K. Can an arduino be programmed as a Digital Delay Pulse Generator for ~8 individual channels?

Thanks.

Yes. very easy to to this - see the blink without delay example. You may need extra hardware to control the valves.

You could also add control for the vac pump.

Mark.

Thank you, to control the valves I'm using a LabJack with a relay board that is working out just fine. A few other questions I have:

  1. What is the maximum number of channels that I can individually map pulses too?
  2. What is the minimum pulse width that i can establish 500 ms, 10 ms, ect??
  3. Is a single UNO or Mega good enough?

Thanks.