I'm trying to drive a solenoid I took off an old pinball machine with an Arduino. The pinball machine ran on 25 V AC and I've found that the solenoid was 2 Ω online (so 12.5 A). The Arduino puts out 5 V @ 40 mA. After some googling, it seems I want to use a MOSFET with a logic level gate to do this. However my electronics knowledge isn't nearly enough to understand most of what's going on. I'm looking at different MOSFETs on Digikey and it gives me choices for a lot of stuff. Some of them I think I've figured out and others I still have no idea about:
- FET Type: I'm not sure what the difference is between N and P channel
- Drain to Source Voltage (Vdss): I'm assuming this is the max voltage it can handle going through it, so I should be finding a MOSFET that will support 25 V+?
- Current - Continuous Drain (Id): Assuming this is the max amperage going through it, so looking for one with 12.5 A+
- Vgs(th) (Max): I think this has something to do with the activation voltage applied to the gate that will make it activate, so I need one with less than 5 V?
- Power - Max: Assuming this is the max power it can handle. I've calculated the power the solenoid would need as P = V*I = 25 V * 12.5 A = 312.5 W, so I need a MOSFET that can handle more than 312.5 W?
- I don't know what Rds On (Max), Gate Charge (Qg), or Input Capacitance (Ciss) mean. Are they important for my uses?
Based on searching with these numbers, the cheapest MOSFET returned was this one. Would this work?
On AC coils: I tested the coil with a 25V DC current, and it still operated fine. Unless there is some detrimental aspect to this that I'm not thinking of, I don't think there should be anything wrong with just using a 5V DC source for the Arduino and a 25V DC source for the coil?