Hi all,
Well, thought I'd get into a bit of water conservation, and as I have quite a few micros around, my thoughts turned to turning water on and off.
As a lot of power supplies are 12v DC I initially thought that there were heaps of cheap solenoids out there ready to buy. Unfortunately I must have been somewhat deluded as there are not many 12v DC solenoids in existence - maybe more 24v AC.
Checking on Ebay showed some in the USA at about (from memory) $AU10, but being the ever great Australian product consumer, thought I'd find the same here.
Well, as it turns out, after submitting a request to (apparently) the largest supplier of solenoids in Oz that the equivalent cheap plastic solenoid here is around $AU75.00 FMD! What justifies this great markup?