Allegro MicroSystems Europe has designed a new family of constant-current LED driver ICs, the A6261/62/64 devices, suitable for internal and external illumination applications in the automotive market.

A single device offers four channels, each providing up to 100mA LED current. The driver ICs operate with a low dropout voltage to minimise power dissipation, and do not require any ballast resistors.
The user-selected current is provided to four outputs with each output equally sharing the load. The family features short-circuit to ground protection that disables the shorted channel, allowing the others to continue to operate. An open LED situation on any channel is also detected.
 
The family features a current fold-back circuit that uses the chip junction temperature in order to fold back the LED current and to protect the IC and LEDs in situations where they are mounted close to one another on the same substrate.

They can be used in exterior brake, turn, tail, and rear combination lighting as well as interior dome, map and 'puddle' lighting.

A commercial grade version of the A6261 the A6261E is also available for consumer lighting applications. The devices are offered in the eMSOP-10 (LY) and eTSSOP-16 (LP)packages.