Hello! I'm new to the world of Arduino (and electronics in general).
I am trying to create a circuit to independently control two incandescent light bulbs.
Both bulbs are wired with a common anode and I wanted to know if by connecting them in this way the Arduino could be used as "ground switching". Board is Mega model.
Feel free to give me any recommendations on how to design this circuit. Thank you very much for your time! (I don't know if this forum category is correct)
Hard to know where to begin so let’s start with a few basic questions:
Do you really have almost zero electronics knowledge as you imply?
Can you power these lamps directly from your 5V supply?
Have you done any basic reading on Arduino? Such as working through the simple built-in sketches from File > Examples > 01.Basics? Including at least Blink?
Presumably you want to do something other than simply switch them on and off with your (expensive) MEGA? What?
Meanwhile the answer is almost certainly No, unless the lamps have a very low current requirement. (And if you provide power to your MEGA, which is missing from your draft circuit.)
Hello!
Well, I may have a little knowledge on the subject, but for things like this, it's zero knowledge.
Yes, the bulbs work with 5 volts, at 120mA each. They are small and will never shine at the same time.
I have seen them, the problem is that the connection must preferably be able to be made directly from the power supply
Yes, I am wiring an aircraft panel for a home simulator project. The idea is to use the Mobiflight software to be able to control the light bulbs as outputs depending on the state of the simulator software on the computer.
Thank you very much for your answer!
The current of the one lamp is way more than arduino pin current limit, which is 20 mA normal and 40 mA maximum/ You must not connect your lamps directly, you need a mosfet driver
The Arduino isn´t a power supply unit for external componets. The Arduino provides control signals for eg a relay.
I can replace the bulbs with ones with much lower amperage or with LEDs, that would not be a problem!
That is the question, I would like to know if there is any possible way for the supply for the bulbs to come from an external source and their lighting is controled by the Arduino
Use some darlington transitors to control the lamps.
To solve the issue of amp demand I am going to use an Output Amplifier in shield format with the tbd62783afwg transistors. It is a product offered by a manufacturer related to this type of projects
Ok, this seems to be similar.
Great! Thank you! Then the appropriate way to connect the circuit would then be like the one I proposed at the beginning of the post but placing each of these transistors after the light bulb and before the pin? (In addition to providing current to each transistor)
That's the nominal current of each lamp.
Remember that the resistance of the filament is much lower when cold than when - therefore the "surge" current at startup will be several times 120mA!
This is known as Inrush current:
This is a great way to blow up semiconductor switches!
As you said you have little or no electronics and Arduino experience I'd recommend you first study the built-in example I've shown below, substituting your parallel lamps for the motor.
It's the only one of the 15 Arduino Starter Kit projects that uses a MOSFET, which would remain suitable even if you later decide on higher power lamps.
Here's a tutorial on that project:
I have moved this to Project Guidance....Is this the category, you were thinking of @carlos_novallas?
Yes! Ty 
