I am going to be getting some LED strips for illuminating my house. They will be replacing florescent bulbs. There will be about 10-15 4 ft sections, in different locations. They are 12V, and each section will consume about 4-5W. They will likely produce over 500 lumens. Each 4 ft section will be completely separate from the other ones. They will, unfortunately, each need their own power supply. There is no way around that. That means an additional $3 per light, doubling the cost. With the number of lights, it is already pretty expensive. And there are additional costs, like acrylic or some other material to diffuse the light and make it look better. I want to minimize costs here.
I would also like the ability to adjust the brightness of the strips with PWM. They may be too bright initially. I have looked at PWM boards and the cheapest ones are $2.50. For 10-15 lights, that's and additional $30-40. I would like to design one that is under $1. I could use some help with that.
So the main component here is the switch. I already have 10s of these IRFZ44N mosfets from international rectifier (datasheet). They look like the best option here. I will use a simple pulldown resistor here to avoid certain issues. I need to generate some sort of PWM to drive them. It needs to be between 0 and 100% (or very close). It should be at a reasonable frequency, .5-50kHz. I do not care if it is sort of audible. I do not really know what to do here. What is the most economical solution? Is there some IC that requires very little other passives? Is 555 the best option? I am not too familiar with 555 or other oscillators, and have never built any kind of oscillator circuit.
I would also like the ability to adjust the brightness of the strips with PWM. They may be too bright initially. I have looked at PWM boards and the cheapest ones are $2.50. For 10-15 lights, that's and additional $30-40. I would like to design one that is under $1. I could use some help with that.
So the main component here is the switch. I already have 10s of these IRFZ44N mosfets from international rectifier (datasheet). They look like the best option here. I will use a simple pulldown resistor here to avoid certain issues. I need to generate some sort of PWM to drive them. It needs to be between 0 and 100% (or very close). It should be at a reasonable frequency, .5-50kHz. I do not care if it is sort of audible. I do not really know what to do here. What is the most economical solution? Is there some IC that requires very little other passives? Is 555 the best option? I am not too familiar with 555 or other oscillators, and have never built any kind of oscillator circuit.