ULN2003 CURRENT DRIVER:

The ULN2003 current driver is a high voltage, high current Darlington arrays each
containing seven open collector Darlington pairs with common emitters. Each channel is
rated at 500mA and can withstand peak currents of 600mA. Suppression diodes are
included for inductive load driving and the inputs are pinned opposite the outputs to
simplify board layout.
These versatile devices are useful for driving a wide range of loads including solenoids,
relays DC motors, LED displays filament lamps, thermal print heads and high power
buffers. This chip is supplied in 16 pin plastic DIP packages with a copper lead frame to
reduce thermal resistance.

This ULN2003 driver can drive seven relays at a time. The pins 8 and 9 provide ground
and Vcc respectively.
The working of ULN driver is as follows:
It can accept seven inputs at a time and produces seven corresponding outputs. If the
input to any one of the seven input pins is high, then the value at its corresponding output
pin will be low, for example if the input at pin 6 is high, then the value at the
corresponding output i.e., output at pin 11 will be low. Similarly if the input at a
particular pin is low, then the corresponding output will be high.

One of the coil terminals of the relay will be connected to the output pin of the ULN
driver. Thus in order to switch on the relay to operate any load, the output from the ULN
driver (any one of the 7 outputs) should be low. Thus for the output to be low, the input
applied at that corresponding input pin should be high. The input to the ULN driver is
provided by the microcontroller. Thus the instruction required to operate the relay
through the microcontroller is
SETB PX.Y
Where X is the port number (P0, P1, P2 and P3)
And Y is the pin number of Port X.
ULN driver interfacing with the microcontroller: