IC for driving LED strip controlled with an arduino
I'm looking to power an rgb led strip (common anode, 7.2 watt/meter) and to control it with pwm using an arduino. Since the arduino can't put out that much power, I'm looking for an IC that can allow external power as well as pwm control. I thought about ULN2003 but other forums seem to indicate that it doesn't really do well over 100mA (there's another problem with this IC that I'll mention at the end). Since the strip is 12 volt, and the 7.2w is presumably divided into the 3 colors equally, I'm calculating I need an IC that can sink 200mA per channel for a meter of led strip. Ideally I'd like the ability to daisy chain without having to switch out IC's in the future so maybe something upto 600mA would be nice.
The circuit I have in mind is +12V to the led strip, and the RGB points connected to the output terminal of the IC and the inputs connected to the arduino pwm pins. Failing to find an appropriate IC, I think I could always use discrete MOSFETs but I have no idea how to look for the appropriate ones or how exactly I'd wire those up to provide appropriate current limiting for the arduino.
The other problem with the ULN2003 is that it won't work with common cathode LED array's such as multi-digit seven segment displays. It's not related to this particular project but I'm hoping to find a push pull type IC so it can also be used with common cathode LED clusters. Also, the reason I'm trying to find an appropriate IC is versatility over discrete components. A multichannel push-pull type IC would be easily usable with a lot of other, possibly non LED related things.
Thanks for the help.
Posted Apr 10, 2021, 12:59 PM UTC · edited