Hi,
As a novice in electronics, I need your help.
I am an amateur sky watchers and need to keep my telescope optics warm to keep it dew free during long winter night open field sessions.
As standard procedure, I need to run a 10/20Watt Nichrome heater element with 12V supply. I have already built the element and made it physically compatible to my telescope.
But, in order to control the heating, I need a controller. I have a plan to make a simple timer with 555 with pulse duration of 1sec.
I want to keep its a output UP duration variable while keeping the total pulse duration constant. Now I plan to switch the main heater element using the timer output. In this way, I can make my scope warmer by keeping the timer output UP duration higher than the DOWN duration and vise versa.
I need your help in selecting a solid state switch. Any power transistor that can handle 2Amps of load and PCB mountable? Is 2N 3055 suitable? Does it come in PCB mountable package? if yes, what wd be the name of that?
Regards-
Debasisswan