BOJACK IRLB8721 MOSFET Transistors IRLB8721PBF 30 V 62 A N-Channel Power MOSFET TO-220 (Pack of 10 Pcs)

Product Information

These strips have four pins you need to connect. One red channel, one green channel, a blue channel and power. One meter of your analog LED strip can draw approximately 1A per LED pin when all red green and blue LEDs are at full brightness (which produces white).

Edit for clarification: I'm using the 5V pin to power the board via the 12V power source (through a 5V regulator). I've tested the software using an LED and the signal is deifnitely coming through fine. Also, this is just a uni prototype, so as far as I'm concerned if a solution works short term but wouldn't be viable in a final product I can just add that to the report! You need a driver circuit to boost the power – add a transistor amplifier in each control line. For example, you can use N-channel MOSFETs like the IRLB8721 that work with 3.3V and 5V logic. So, they are suitable to use with your Arduino or ESP8266. You can use the preceding links or go directly to MakerAdvisor.com/tools to find all the parts for your projects at the best price! R DS(on) : Static Drain-to-Source On-Resistance is the minimum resistance of the MOSFET when it is driven to the fully ON state known as the Saturation Region. The key to look for here is that R DS(on) may be specified at one or a couple of V GS voltages. V DS : Drain-To-Source Voltage is the maximum voltage that the device can be used to switch. If you’re switching 12V, you need a device with a V DS> 12V and usually you want something with a fair amount of safety margin.A device like this can be driven directly off of 5V logic, but because its internal resistance is twice as high, it will drop twice the amount of voltage and dissipate twice as much power/heat in the device for the same current. From a practical standpoint, this means it can handle about 1/2 the full rated current than it could handle if it was driven at 10V. I would consider this as being partially 5V logic compatible. If you are using a 60A device to control a 20A load for instance, this will generally be fine. If you need 40A out of it, then you will need to drive it harder.

Then, you can control the strip with PWM as you would do to control a single RGB LED. To find out how to control an RGB LED with the Arduino you can read: How do RGB LEDs work? Looking at the example spec sheet below, this is telling us that to drive the MOSFET to full saturation requires a V GS voltage of 10V where max resistance is 8.7mOhm. If we were to drive it instead at 4.5V directly off of 5V logic, the resistance basically is twice as high, but is still only about 16mOhm. Monocolor LED strips only produce one color. These strips are really easy to wire, they just have two terminals: GND and VCC as shown in the strip below. By calculating the RC time constant and thus the rise/fall time of gate voltage - during rise and fall the If it is spec’d at 10V only, the part is not logic compatible and needs something close to 10V to drive it into saturation. This means a MOSFET driver, transistor or some other means is required to drive the gate with something close to 10V.I have tried this with a IRLB8721 mosfet, but realized it needs a higher voltage than what the GPIO can provide. The most suitable one I could find then was the IRF3205, seeing that it is used more frequently with Raspberry PI/Arduino applications, but unfortunately this is also not working. It seems like my GPIO voltage is still too low. microsecond, which would be fine for 1kHz PWM, but pushing it for 50kHz PWM where there's only 10us

Analog LED strips have their LEDs wired in parallel. The whole strip works as a giant RGB LED. So, you can light up your whole strip in many different colors, but you can’t control LEDs individually. This means your strip can only be one color at a time. This type of LED strips are cheaper than the digital ones and easier to use. frequencies you need to ensure shorter RC time constant in the gate-drive circuit. This usually means LED strips are just amazing, and there are a wide variety of LED strips to chose from. Do you know what is the best LED strip for your project? Here we explain the main differences between several types of LED strips and their features.

Technical Specifications

LED density: this means how much LEDs the strip has per meter. You can find a wide variety of LED densities since 30, 60, 72 , 120 LEDs per meter and other options. It is to my understanding that I need a logic level mosfet with an RDs(on) of 3.3V or less, but I am really struggling to find one readily available in Australia... The other parameter you need to consider is the total gate capacitance as that affects how fast PWM can be used (depending on the gate drive current). A well-designed switching regulator probably won't need a heatsink. A linear regulator will probably overheat even with a heatsink. V GS(th) : Gate Threshold Voltage is the voltage at which the MOSFET starts to conduct. Any voltage less than this will drive the MOSFET to the OFF state known as the Cut-Off Region. To possibly be logic compatible, the V GS(th) needs to be well under the logic high voltage level.