Well actually IKEA is selling transistors.

They must have some radio or something that's got them inside

Thanks for your reply. I think I am starting to get an understanding of it. First the current the "watts" and then you have the heat dissipation as well to consider. If a transistor is made of metal it might have 3-5watts of "cooling" while a normal one only has 0.5. And then you have ones that are much more power full and needs heat sinks.

I have ordered 2 books on electronics to get more knowledge.

And I will actually change the LEDs so the transistors in the Sparkfun kit should be enough :-D Turns out I must have had some really old leds laying around.

Thanks... That seams to be a good site :-D

Oh another post :-)

Yeah that's sort of my problem..... Most transistors with low voltages had really low amps. But as long as I can look at 40-60 volts transistors it wont be a problem to find a transistor that has plenty of extra power. Will need a little heat sink most likely, but thats an easy fix :-D

Yeah I realised the same thing and I am actually looking at book right now. Found 2 that look to be good and complement each other I think. Dummies is one of them

Well About the P2N222A, I have 2 of them in the Sarkfun kit that I bought. But I cant find anyone in sweden that are selling them.

And if I would be able to use one of these Darlingtontransistors that would be easy, simple and cheap. Maybe the books will tell me if they would work.

http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/BD675-D.PDF

Thanks...

You have helped  quite a bit. I think. I need to google some of the terms to get an understanding of what they are.

I think I will be able to figure the rest out, but I would need to know one thing.

If a transistor is rated at 40-50v can I still use it on the Arduino board that is using 5v and LEDs at 3v?

David

Hey everyone,

I have received my Arduino UNO Sparkfun Inv kit a couple of days ago :-D yay.

I am new to electronics so try to be nice

I am making a LED light (probably 10-20 LEDs) that is connected to a motion detector to go in my hallway.I have everything running nice and smooth. The code is done and everything is running just the way I want on my bread board. But its only running 2 LEDs at the moment. The LEDs I will use are red 3volt 120ma diodes and I have read that the transistor (P2N2222A) can take 600ma, but I am not sure if I am understanding things right?

I have been reading about transistors for 30-40 min now and I didn't get much smarter. The data sheets are so hard to read if you don't know all the stuff in them :-( All transistors I can find seams to work with really high voltages or with very low amps.

Could someone plz explain some basics and help me to understand what I need to get something that will do the job?

Thanks loads.

David