Outdoor Light Sensing controller

Projects General Guidance
1

Hey everyone! I have found this forum very helpful but I have a few questions on how to go about doing a project for a family member!

I am wanting to make a setup with an arduino board that turns on a cluster of LEDs dependent on the ambient light.

Example: (those little garden lights you see outside that come on at night)

Which is what I want it to exactly do but instead of converting solar light to power the lights I will use a larger battery cell to power the efficient LEDs.

So what would be the best route to make this feasible?

Would I need photodiodes? or something similar?

I really would appreciate the help!

2

If all you want to do is to switch on the lights once it is getting dark, you will not need microcontroller at all.

Check out this for example:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/nightlight

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

3

For the ambient light sensing, a simple LDR (Light Dependent Resistor) plus a 10K resistor to an Arduino Analog input would let you set the light level you want..

Example: http://arduino-direct.com/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=135

DISCLAIMER: I mentioned stuff from my own Shop...