Copied over from another thread, because this would be a better place for it:

Having the possibility to control a pump would be great, because then you can control the rise rate, and I am already thinking of (and experimenting a bit with) possibilities to do a low-cost peristaltic pump...

If the software and hardware included basic support for that feature from the get-go (i.e. 2 pins for controlling the pump and a setting to steer those pins by both # of pulses *and* timing per pulse and pulse interval), one could have a very simple control of many a pump model...


EDIT: Made a mockup for clarity...

* With this setup one could both do a single pulse of ex. 5s to control a simple DC motor driven pump, or use a simple pulse-to-step converter board to drive a stepper motor pump, or anything in between...
** Any more than that would be much easier to implement, as the basic control logic would be there already, so the modders need only modify the steering code bit!