The total resistance of a LED array

ledresistancetransistors

First time poster and a hobby EE enthusiast here.

I want to turn on a LED array with a transistor switch and I'm having trouble with determining what will the total resistance on my transistor collector be. And without that I can't determine what should my base resistor be.

This is part of my schema, the switch will be a pin on an Arduino that can supply 5V and max 40 mA:

shema1

I got the LED array scheme from an online LED array calculator and it gave me the info that the array draws 60 mA current – from which I figured I could get the total resistance of the array with Ohms Law: 12V/0.06A = 200 Ohm. If my collector resistor is 200 Ohm that would mean that my base resistor should be 2k7 Ohm.

Is that correct? Can a treat the array as 200 Ohm resistor on the collector? Or is the total resistance the parallel of 3 resistors – 110 Ohm? Any advice or a hint in the correct way is appreciated.

Thanks,
Tadija

Edit: LED Red 2.0V, 20mA

Best Answer

Since LEDs drop voltage when there's current through them, and since Ohm's law states that:

$$ R = \frac{E}{I} $$

They can certainly be considered to be resistances of a particular value with a known current through them and a known voltage across them.

For instance, one of your your LEDs, with 20mA through it and 2 volts across it, will look like:

$$ R = \frac{E}{I} = \frac{2V}{0.02A} = 100 \text{ ohms}$$

Usually, though, the resistance of the LED is ignored because it's not needed to calculate the values of the ballast resistors or the transistor's base resistor.

The value of the ballast resistor is determined by:

$$ Rs = \frac{Vs - (n \ \ Vf) + Vce(sat)}{If}\text{ ohms} $$

where n is the number of LEDs, Vf is the forward voltage of one LED, Vce(sat) is the transistor's collector to emitter saturation voltage,\$If\$ is the LED forward current, and Vs is the supply voltage.

In your case that works out to:

$$ Rs = \frac{12V - (3 \times 2V) + 0.5V}{0.02A}\text{ 275 ohms} $$

The 330's you have in there will work, no problem, with the LEDs losing a little brightness.

Since there will be three series strings in parallel, the current into the transistor's collector will be 60 milliamperes. Switching transistors doing this kind of work are usually run at a forced beta of ten, which means that for 60 mA into the collector 6 mA is forced into the base.

The base-to-emitter junction of a transistor is basically a diode, so in this case it'll drop about 0.7 volts with 6 mA through it.

That means that with the Arduino supplying 5V to drive the base, about 4.3 volts of that must be dropped across a resistor with 6 mA through it so, from Ohm's law, R = E/I = 4.3V/6mA = 717 ohms. 750 ohms is a standard E24 value and will work well.