TIP3055 Vs MOSFET for LED Strobe

Other Hardware LEDs and Multiplexing
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First off, a thank you to any who man answer! This is my first post here. Up until about 6 months ago, I had never been involved with micro controllers at all. I am mainly a Comms guy. I was tasked as part of a development team at work to built a smart battery charger for some of our aircraft emergency batteries, and let's say the rest is history!

So I have taken some of what I am learning and applied it to my "second job" of lighting for off road race trucks. I built a strobe controller that strobes 18 watt LED pods. I am wanting to expand it to controlling several LED bars that have around a 15A current draw when full on. for the pods, I have just been using TIP120's and they work great. No heat issues, etc. I was looking at the TIP3055 for the higher amp capacity but after reading some other posts here, I see the STP40NF10L MOSFET being recommended a lot for higher load projects.

My question is, will the STP40NF10L switch on and off fast enough for the strobe effect? I can't quite grasp the data sheet yet, although I have my face buried in a good book on the subject.

Any feedback/experience would be greatly appreciated.

Nick

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Not so much the talkative bunch I suppose. :slight_smile:

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that have around a 15A current draw when full on.

In which case using a TIP3055 with a maximum current of 15A is not such a good idea. You should always aim to run transistors at 80% or less of the maximum rating.

will the STP40NF10L switch on and off fast enough for the strobe effect?

Strobes are glacially slow in electronics terms so there is nothing that will not respond that fast.

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Thanks man. I am watching the mailbox now for the MOSFET. For the smaller LED pods, I am just using the old TIP 120 since I had a bag full of them. In strobe mode, the LED isn't on long enough to care about the slight voltage drop.

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Video of the effect that I came up with for the forward and rear LED pods:

Imgur