Help Choosing a Board/Controller

[MustangMatt]

First off, I have very little experience with this electrical/circuit board business but I'm an engineering student so don't be skeptical to using technical terms.

I'm designing something for work that needs a board/controller of some type that can run an air flow controller, 6 servovalves, and have a digital output displaying pressure. I want to be able to hit a "Run Test" button, have a constant air flow and open the valve for an alotted time and show the pressure. When the time is up, it closes that valve and opens another up...and have it run in succession until the last valve is closed. If more details are needed, I can provide them. I'm just trying to keep the explanation as simple as possible.

My first guess was an Arduino board since it's open source, cheap...but I don't know. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Do you have any microcontroller programming experience?.

AVR's (which the Arduino is) are fine, but PIC's are more popular and easier to learn.

But any micro-controller would be more than enough, it doesn't sound a difficult project.

 

[MustangMatt]

I do not unfortunately. Only programming experience I have is some C++ from classes.

I guess...basically, it's going to be a string of:

Start Test
Air On
Valve Open
(time)
Valve Close
Repeat
End Test
...with a purge option to clear air way