Light dimmer Question

wolff

I want to use a BS to control a driver circuit to power a 12 volt automotive lamp at various intensities. Can anyone recommend a component (transistor I'm guessing?) that I can use for this. I'm guessing the lamp will will draw up to 3 amps.
Thanks

Mike Green

Look at Nuts and Volts Column #6. From the main Parallax webpage, click on the Resources tab. On the Resources page, you'll see a link for the Nuts and Volts Columns index. You'll need a switching transistor that can handle 3 Amps. It'll need to be a Darlington transistor so it will have enough gain to control 3A with only 10-20mA from the Stamp. The TIP120 available from many sources including RadioShack can certainly handle this task. A lot depends on how you need to handle the dimming and what else you need the Stamp to do. While the Stamp is turning the lamp on and off to vary its brightness, it can't do other things. There are some ways to interleave some other things, but that depends on details you haven't provided yet.

wolff

Mike Green wrote: »

Look at Nuts and Volts Column #6. From the main Parallax webpage, click on the Resources tab. On the Resources page, you'll see a link for the Nuts and Volts Columns index. You'll need a switching transistor that can handle 3 Amps. It'll need to be a Darlington transistor so it will have enough gain to control 3A with only 10-20mA from the Stamp. The TIP120 available from many sources including RadioShack can certainly handle this task.

THANK YOU Mr. Green!!!