High Current, High Side Driver Help Needed

[Roddy Wayne]

Hello Group,

This is my first post to this group.
My problem is, I have Eight 12 Volt Lamps that I want to control with a PIC. These lamps have their screw shells already grounded so, I need to control the Positive 12 Volts going to the lamps. Each lamps current is about 2.2 Amps but, the inrush current could be several times as much. I am looking for any recommended Transistor Drivers / Circuits that could be used in this application.

Thanks for any help!
Rod

 

[ADRT]

I use IRF540's for a lot of my high power projects. They are relatively easy to find and can handle some pretty high currents and voltages, but are easily triggered with an output from my Arduino without putting undo strain on the output. Can easily be used in conjunction with an opto isolator if concerns of damaging controller output.

 

[ADRT]

Sorry that's wrong. I wasn't taking into account that you where switching on high side of the LED.You would need a PNP MOSFET instead. This one should work fine for what you are doing and is reasonably priced.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10349

 

[Roddy Wayne]

Sorry that's wrong. I wasn't taking into account that you where switching on high side of the LED.You would need a PNP MOSFET instead. This one should work fine for what you are doing and is reasonably priced.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10349

Thank you very much! I've downloaded the pdf and will try them soon.

 

[(*steve*)]

You'll probably find something of assistance here: http://www.vishay.com/docs/70611/70611.pdf

Figure 3 on page 2 has a suitable circuit. Often the N channel mosfet is replaced by an NPN transistor.