Diodes Incorporated has introduced its latest innovation, the AL5887Q, a 36-channel automotive-compliant linear LED driver designed to enhance both interior and exterior automotive lighting applications. With its ability to drive RGB configurations and individual LEDs, the AL5887Q offers exceptional flexibility to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), enabling unique and dynamic lighting effects. This capability allows automotive designers to create striking animated lighting patterns and a wide range of color depths, helping brands distinguish themselves with highly customizable lighting designs. This innovative product is particularly suited for a variety of automotive lighting applications, including ambient interior lighting, rear lighting, exterior electric vehicle (EV) charging status indicators, and infotainment system displays.
Key Features of the AL5887Q
The AL5887Q provides significant benefits in terms of design flexibility, energy efficiency, and ease of integration. Capable of driving up to 12 RGB LED modules, the AL5887Q incorporates three programmable banks (A, B, C), enabling software control of each color channel for optimal lighting effects. The output current of all 36 channels is set via an external resistor, ensuring precise and consistent control over the LEDs’ brightness and color.
One of the standout features of the AL5887Q is its hardware-selectable digital interface, which allows designers to choose between I²C or SPI for full programming flexibility. This versatility ensures that the LED driver can be seamlessly integrated into a wide range of automotive lighting systems, regardless of the design’s specific requirements.
The AL5887Q supports current configurations of up to 70mA per channel, providing high-precision control of the LEDs and eliminating the need for paralleling channels to achieve desired brightness levels. The device also offers automatic power-saving features, such as a 15µA low-power mode and an ultra-low quiescent shutdown of just 1µA when the LEDs have been off for more than 30ms. These energy-saving features are critical for minimizing unnecessary power draw from the vehicle’s battery, which is particularly important in electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid systems where battery life is a key concern.
Enhanced Protection and Diagnostics
In addition to its advanced lighting capabilities, the AL5887Q is equipped with a comprehensive set of protection features. It includes an open-drain FAULT pin for reporting faults, such as short circuits or open circuits, ensuring that designers can easily monitor and troubleshoot the system. The device also features overtemperature protection (OTP) with pre-OTP warnings to prevent damage to the driver or LEDs in extreme temperature conditions.
To offer even greater flexibility, the AL5887Q allows users to configure fault reporting for each of the 36 channels through individually addressable fault mask registers and open/short registers. Designers can enable or disable fault reporting for specific channels, giving them full control over the diagnostic capabilities of the lighting system. Additionally, unused RGB channels can be disabled via configurable LED registers, optimizing the overall system’s performance and reducing unnecessary power consumption.
Superior Dimming and Color Precision
The AL5887Q incorporates a built-in 16MHz oscillator for pulse-width modulation (PWM) dimming, eliminating the need for an external clock. This simplifies the design process, reduces the PCB footprint, and lowers the bill-of-materials (BOM) costs for lighting modules. The device uses a 12-bit PWM addressable register, along with a 30kHz internal PWM generator, to achieve smooth and precise dimming. This combination of features ensures that the LEDs can be dimmed from 100% to 3% duty cycle with exceptional accuracy.
When the duty cycle drops below 3%, the internal circuitry transitions the PWM signal to analog dimming to maintain the overall linearity of the dimming process. This ensures smooth transitions between different brightness levels, making the lighting effects more natural and less prone to flicker. The AL5887Q offers an impressive 3% device-to-device and channel-to-channel current accuracy, allowing designers to achieve uniform color distribution and precise color mixing across the entire lighting system.
Robust Temperature Range and Compact Design
The AL5887Q is designed to operate in harsh automotive environments, with an operating temperature range spanning from -40°C to +125°C. This wide range ensures the device can withstand the extreme temperature fluctuations commonly encountered in automotive applications. The device is housed in a small-footprint wettable W-QFN6060-52/SWP (Type A1) package, which measures just 6mm x 6mm, making it an ideal solution for space-constrained automotive lighting modules.
Availability and Pricing
The AL5887Q is available now at a price of $1.13 per unit in 1,000-piece quantities. Additionally, a standard compliance version of the device, the AL5887, is also available, designed for use in industrial and commercial applications outside the automotive sector.
With its advanced features, energy efficiency, and design flexibility, the AL5887Q is poised to help automotive manufacturers create cutting-edge lighting solutions that meet the demands of modern vehicles, while also contributing to improved energy efficiency and long-term reliability.
