"ULN BOB" 16 Channel Darlington Driver IC Breakout Board

Accommodates (2) Darlington Driver IC's For A Total of 16 Outputs.

When I was designing this board, I wanted to make sure it was economical, and could be reused for small embedded projects to larger PLC-driven installations.

Some example configurations include:

1) Driving higher-voltage loads, like a 12V stepper motor, with microcontroller and single-board computer pins, like those from an Arduino, and Raspberry Pi, respectively.

2) Connecting an output from a 24V PLC, to smaller-voltage loads like, LED's, or an Arduino digital input pin, without the need for 1/2 watt resistor dividers.

3) Or, some combination of both, on the same board!

All Orders come with Schematic and Assembly Procedure.

I created the ULN BOB because I work a lot with industrial electronics, and I could not find a Darlington Driver Board that was designed to have the flexibility I needed, like the ability to drive high-to-low, or low-to-high signals.

Sure - There are Relay Boards like this:

They're great- cheap, and easy to find. But they're also big, and the relay coils are only rated for 5V.

There are 24V Relay Boards too. They're just as big, and only give you 8 outputs for the same price of the ULN-BOB (which gives you a max of 16 outputs). Plus, either relay boards DO NOT work both ways, as does the ULN-BOB. HOWEVER, if currents above 1A* are needed, then a Relay Board is the way to go.

This board uses standard 0.1 inch holes for the inputs and outputs. This allows connections to be made with readily-available 0.1 inch pin jumpers like these:

The output header pin arrangement was specifically designed to also accommodate a 20-pin IDC cable, like this:

The Power header accommodates a 2 pos. 5mm screw terminal connector (like the image below), for bare-wire or larger pin leads:

There is also an additional "AUX" input. This also is a 2pos. 5mm screw terminal and allows bare-wire or larger pin connections. I added this, because A)There was an application where I needed to bring an additional 12V supply to a display panel, and B)There was room for it!

The outputs of the Darlington Driver IC's go into resistor-spaced holes. These holes can be jumpered instead, to allow maximum current:

The ULN BOB accommodates (2) Darlington Driver IC's. These IC's can be either the 16pin (7 Ch.) or 18pin (8 Ch.)type.

The ULN BOB accommodates all of these Darlington Driver IC's:

• ULQ/ULN2001A [16 pins (7ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2002A [16 pins (7ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2003A [16 pins (7ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2004A [16 pins (7ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2005A [16 pins (7ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2011A [16 pins (7ch), max. 600mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2012A [16 pins (7ch), max. 600mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2013A [16 pins (7ch), max. 600mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2014A [16 pins (7ch), max. 600mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2015A [16 pins (7ch), max. 600mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2021A [16 pins (7ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2022A [16 pins (7ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2023A [16 pins (7ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2024A [16 pins (7ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2025A [16 pins (7ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2801A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2802A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2803A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2804A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2805A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2811A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2812A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2813A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2814A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2815A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2821A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2822A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2823A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]
• ULQ/ULN2824A [18 pins (8ch), max. 500mA outputs]

NOTE: Most Darlington Driver IC's handle 500mA per output. IC's that have the code: ULQ/ULN2X1XA (where X is a number), can handle 600mA! DO NOT EXCEED THESE RATINGS!!

HOWEVER, you CAN* wire the Darlingtons together, to increase the current load to 1A, or more!** The trade-off is that you then reduce the amount of available outputs.

I hope this board will find a place in your application where relay boards won't work, and other darlington driver boards just aren't as flexible for your needs.

If you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment or contact me.