[bjornhaa]

Thanks a lot for that Brandon. Im planning to create a indoor irrigation system for my plants. I live in the middle of a city and have no access to a regular garden hose outlet. So my plan is this:

– Some kind of water reservoir that sits above the plants to make use of gravity to get the water flowing.
– Out of this reservoir I will have several small plastic tubes since the different plants needs different amount of water.
– To be able to stop the water from flowing from the reservoir out the tubes i need some kind of valves on these tubes.
– These valves are operated and powered from the Opensprinkler PI
– And last, i program the Raspberry PI with some kind of schedule (or webinterface). This is the easy part since im a programmer 😉

but as explained, all the valves i found requires pressure from a garden hose to be able to open/close the solenoid valve. Ofc, i could make the water reservoir so big that it creates a pressure just by the weight of the water, but i probably have to talk to the neighbor above to make that happen 🙂

So thats why i started talking about pumps. If im not able to find valves that operates without water-pressure, i need to create that pressure. And yes, I discovered that the pumps draws to much current for the Opensprinkler. But i guess, if a pump is the solution, im better off with a PiFace digital to operate a switch to power the pump on/off. And then maybe use the OpenSprinkler PI to operate valves if the pump creates enough pressure to make them work.

But obviously, i prefer not to use a pump

[bjornhaa]

Thanks for your answers, but they do not completely answer my questions. All the valves i find at Orbit, Pope, Rainwise and Toro requires pressure (from a garden hose or pump) to function, and since im operating indoors i dont have pressure (only gravity). I could ofc skip the valves, and instead start and stop a pump. Is there any chance i can power a pump from the output stations like the 24v pump here:
http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_11151_10001_34118_-1#.UYg59Csd5NA (500gph 24V Bilge Pump, 3/4″ Port, 1.0A Draw, 1.5A Fuse, 3-1/2″H x 2-3/8″W)

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