I have 2 LED strips with 6 LEDs on each. They use a 12V power supply.
My question, how can I use them like regular LEDs using Arduino UNO? Without any MOSFETS or transistors if possible.
And can I use PWM?
4
-
The only way is to cut out the individual leds an solder some wires to them, so you can connect them directly to the Arduino (with a resistor).– GerbenAug 25, 2016 at 18:12
-
Do you have a picture? And are you sure it's 12v? As 8 LEDs is a weird number.– GerbenAug 25, 2016 at 18:14
-
its 6 actually.. my bad @Gerben– YaddyVirusAug 25, 2016 at 18:19
-
That makes more sense. Two sets of 3 LEDs in series.– GerbenAug 25, 2016 at 18:35
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
It's not safe for the MCU without transistors or so.
You can use some kind of LED driver (for example TLC5940 with on chip PWM) or ULN2003 as 8 channel low side switch (instead of 8 transistors, PWM is possible if you do it programmatically) or many others.
With single transistor it looks like:
Where R_1 can be about 1K and transistor can be any NPN that could handle led current.
-
so what transistor do I actually need? and in case I do use a transistor, how am I going to wire the enitre setup? Aug 25, 2016 at 18:20