yeah, you didn't search first but I'm in a generous mood this morning:

My current design has a driver for a latching solenoid. My design has a 3.3V rail for digital logic including my micro (SiLabs F120) and a 24V rail for the solenoid and a stepper motor. A 5V logic rail is derived from the 24V and my micro is optoisolated from the motor stuff.

Since it's a latching solenoid, all that is needed is a pulse of about 100 ms of one polarity to bang the solenoid in one direction and a reverse-polarity pulse to bang it back the other way. I use an ST L6201 H-bridge driver for this. The bridge has two inputs, which connect to two output ports on the micro (via optoisolators). The solenoid coil is connected between the bridge's outputs.

So to open the solenoid, I drive the output of the appropriate micro port high, which drives the correct bridge output high. At the same time, I start a timer, which counts the 100 ms pulse width. When the timer expires, I turn off the micro port. To move the solenoid back, I turn on the other port pin and start the timer.

Anyways, the point is you need the high-voltage supply and a proper driver for this all to work.

-a