Electronic – arduino – replace this circuit with an IC

arduinodriverled

I moved my Arduino-logic-level-5V-to-12V-LED strip circuit off project board and onto Veroboard and I'm very proud to say everything worked first time:

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(I'm not at all proud of the soldering job, so you don't get to see that.)

So this is the point where you all tell me I can replace the whole shebang with a $0.65 IC. The LED strips pull a few hundred mA per channel and I want to drive them off the Arduino's PWM pins. I've found the ULN2803A, but that's 8 Darlington Pair array in a DIP18 package, I want a 3 or 4 Darlington Pair array in a DIP8 or thereabouts. This question might actually contain the answer I'm looking for, but I don't know enough to even work that out.

Secondary question: how do you even know things like the ULN2803A exist? I happened upon it randomly and from there I worked out that "transistor array" was the search term I wanted. But aside from simply hanging around here, how does one answer the question, "What IC can I buy that will replace this portion of this circuit?"

Best Answer

The best I found was an ULN2065B, in a DIP-14. I used Farnell's parametric search to do this, but you could also use Digi-key, or a vendor independent site like FindChips or Octopart.

I think you're going to struggle to get DIP-8 for four channels: there would not be a pin available for ground, unless it used some kind of serial interface to communicate. You might be able to find a triple driver in this: one pin for ground, three for control signals, three outputs and maybe a pin for Vcc, if the chip requires it.