6 Led strips and 1 arduino

Hello!

I'm very new to the arduino. I want to control 6 Led Strips ( Guangtek GT-SN-12W30D-5008 ) I want them to be something like dimmable, si I'm thinking in using the PWN Digital IN in an Ardunio Duelimilanove, but I don't know how to connect them to the arduino since the strips uses a 12V source energy. I have been looking through the forums and I found that I could use a ULN2003 chip. But I'm not so sure on how to make the circuit.

So I made a little schematic for your consideration :).

I hope you tell me if I'm doing it wrong :smiley:

Are there any other chips I can use?

maybe posting this question in hardware/troubleshooting wouild yield a answer. the developement subsection is about the arduino itself, not what is connected to it.

bot as far as i can see, it looks good to me.

While the circuit is fine you might be overloading the chip. How much does each strip take?
While the chip can probably handle the current it won't be able to handle the power dissipation.
See:-
http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Tutorial/Power_Examples.html
and
http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Tutorial/Power.html

For a full discussion.

Macsimski, I'm so sorry about the thread location, is there a way to move it to a different subforum?

Grumpy_mike, the led strip is 12V and it has 300 leds, so I'm cutting each 50 leds in order to get 6 strips. I'm going to check the links, hoping I can undestand a bit ;D