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Raspberry Pi nightlight

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on · 3 comments
Linux User & Developer; By Gavin Thomas 		Mail this story
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You’ve probably all seen those cheap, solar-powered lamps that you can stick into your garden to try and give it a classy bit of illumination during the night. If you’ve actually got one then you may have found out that they don’t shine very brightly and the plastic stakes can be very flimsy. So why not make your own version? What we’ll show you on this page is the beginning of an array of light-sensitive LEDs using a single LED, so that you can understand how the system works. We’ll use a special resistor called a light dependant resistor (LDR) or photoresistor that changes its resistance based on the levels of light it’s receiving.

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Comments (3)

me1010 ·
I'd recommend adding some sort of lens or mount for the photoresistor, a diffuse domed lens may be best... and there is some non-trivial work to integrate the output on pin 7 [from the sample python code] into a lighting system.

I'm currently doing some RF work with the Raspberry Pi... but it might be fun to design a circuit or two for the 'nightlight' and post them here if anyone is interested.
me1010 ·
I prefer to use the ATtiny13V or similar for most projects and the ATmega164A for the really complex ones with lots of I/O or sensor needs. The Pi is a great ethernet portal for everything else to tie into. I believe the main interface board in the posted video is an Arduino... which is an Atmel microcontroller mounted on an easy to use board.

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