VIABILITY: sensor controlled motors/lights in variable degrees

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello, new to Arduino and the Forum so thanks in advance for your patience.

I have searched around and learnt basics of Arduino, sensors and building sensor controlled lights and motors os several types yet now I am having trouble finding help and directions for controlling the output depending on the sensors input.

Basically I wish to know the viability of several projects all related to a basic notion: Moving and/or lighting a fixed object in gradual steps as a another object (person o persons) gets closer.

Example 1: A back lighted panel in which light get's less intense as an object comes closer to it.

Example 2: an object that vibrates (or moves in other ways like a y-axis circular movement) from less to more as an object comes closer to it.

Any guidance as to where to start or what search parameters to use as I can't fin anything this specific would be much appreciated.

[In the future I wish to control also the brightness of a TV-screen (old and/or new) in a similar fashion, so any thoughts on that would be great too.]

Thanks!

2

Your project consists of two parts - determining how far from the object of interest to the viewer and making the object of interest do something based on that distance.

What terms were you using to try to find a sensor to measure distance? How did you miss the ping sensor?

As far as doing something as a function of the distance, the limit is your imagination.

3

Thanks for that, I did see the Ping sensor searching through options but thought it wasn't what I needed, now looking through it I don't know what I was thinking.

With this in mind and broken down in those two steps I think I'm on the right direction.

Thanks again