I've done a fair amount of MCU based pneumatics control. It's not difficult. For small scale mechatronic applications the main components you want to use are (1

I've done a fair amount of MCU based pneumatics control. It's not difficult. For small scale mechatronic applications the main components you want to use are (1) valves (2) vacuum pumps (3) vacuum generators (4) filters (5) pressure regulators Apparently this kit only includes 1+2, but here's a few quick notes on each. (1) Valves come in many types and are typically delimited by their orifice type (size, connection/thread type) and pressure rating. There are subcategories of multi-way valve, timed actuation, one way (passive) valves, etc. (2) Vacuum pumps replace the need for a shop air supply or small pneumatic pressure generator with a pressure tank. However, they are drastically limited in power and need to be mounted carefully to avoid noise and vibration problems. (3) These turn positive pressure from your supply side in to negative pressure for suction applications. (4) Filters are often used not only to remove particulate matter from air supply side or dehumidify the supplied air, but also to introduce small amount of lubricant oil to the circuit. Larger filter systems on shop air supplies will use refrigeration to dehumidify more completely. (5) Pressure regulators can be very expensive if digitally actuated. Manual ones are quite cheap. For larger applications you usually assume a shop air supply or otherwise externally managed, stable pressure source. The go to 'reference' vendor for catalogs is Airtak from Taiwan: http://www.airtak.com/ http://www.airtak.com/ The world of pneumatics is actually a shadow of its former self in complexity terms... before digital control dominated, there was broadly industrially deployed world of nontrivial pneumatic computers which had memory, logic gates, stacks and buffers implemented without any digital control. Apparently the term to search is 'pneumatic logic': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatics#Pneumatic_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatics#Pneumatic_logic