LouisKatz | Main / MosfetShield

Mosfet Shield for a 5V Arduino form factor and pinout microprocessor board. The board is not intended for unattended use. Please support the Arduino platform by buying Arduino© products. https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Introduction

This is a pretty easy kit. All components go on the top of the board. The pins of the mating Arduino pins are on the bottom of the shield. The header pins for jumpers are installed with the long ends on the top of the board.

The diodes and the MOSFETS are static sensitive. Make sure that you are discharged. Both parts will not work if they are put in backwards. This also might not be safe. Make sure that the polarity is correct.

Make sure that the openings on the screw connectors face out.

There is one separate resistor as ballast for the LED, 1000 ohms. Six 10K ohm resistors come on a tape. These are pull down resistors to keep the gate on the MOSFET low as static is often enough to open up the MOSFET. MOSFETS open via voltage not current. It does not take much amperage to get them to open the pulldown resistors are necessary.

In general installing the low profile items first is easier, resistors, diodes, LEDs. But after them I would do the six mosfets, then the screw terminals. The tall Arduinio stacking headers are probably last. Make sure they are straight.Stick one pin down first and make sure that they are straight This is easiest to do by plugging them into an existing working shield and then putting the board over them. You cannot easily do this by plugging the shield into an Arduino.

The shield operates on the Arduino Uno's 6 PWM pins, Digital 3,5,6,9,10,11

While designed to use with power from an externals source via the screw connectors you can instead disconnect the external source and use the jumper shunt to use VIN or 5V from the Arduino Board. The problem with this is that the amperage available from these pins is quite low. Trying to draw too much and you will fry the Arduino. This is most true with the 5V pin. That pin is limited by the voltage regulator. Be very careful not to have two sources hooked up at once. You could smoke your Arduino.

The resistors labeled 2 and 1 have their order reversed and this is correct. They are in non-intutive positions on the board. The labels are correct. Resistor 2 is for Mosfet 2 and diode 2 and hooks up to the second PWM pin.

Arduino Pin 3 is Mosfet and Output 1 Pin 5 is Output 2 Pin 6 is Output 3 Pin 9 is Output 4 Pin 10 is Output 5 Pin 11 is output 6

When the board is powered the LED should light. If you want to power the board with more than 12 volts the LED might die. You could put in a different ballast resistor, make sure it can handle the watts. Or you could cut the lead to the resistor and disable the power LED.

The MOSFETS theoretically can handle 60 volts. Without heatsinks the MOSFETS ability to handle high amps is limited. The FQP30n06L MOSFETS are rated at 30amps, 22 Continuous. But that is with heat sinks. Running them with too much current could cause a fire hazard or burn them out. The traces on the board will could also burn out with that much amperage and burn out. I do not know the limits.

The MOSFET connects its output pin to ground when energized so if you are using it to power six LED's then then have a common + voltage connection.

This should turn them on.

This is the Arduino code I use to check if these are working.

int pin[] = {3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11}; void setup() {

  for (int x = 0; x < 6; x++) {
  // put your setup code here, to run once:
  pinMode(pin[x],OUTPUT);
  }

}

  void loop() {
    // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
    for (int x = 0; x < 6; x++) {
      analogWrite(pin[x], 250);
      delay (10000);
    }

  }