Ambient Light Sensor For Microcontroller Based Projects

TEMT6000 ambient light sensor is just another analog sensor.It is compatible with micro-controllers which supports analog data input.This sensor is working like a transistor.As light falling on sensor increases the analog output(SIGNAL)will increase.

                                                 If the light is very low then the SIG will be also very low as light increases the SIG will also goes high.

       We can useTEMT6000 ambient light sensor from spark fun electronics in various applications that includes ambient light sensing.Like if you want to control your bulb according to ambient light then TEMT6000 ambient light sensor  is best choice over simple LDRs.This one is more reliable that LDRs

       TEMT6000 is a silicon NPN epitaxial planar photo transistor .The device is sensitive to the visible spectrum.TEMT6000 is used as ambient light sensor for display back light dimming in mobile phones,Notebook computers ,cameras etc.

      The below circuit and code is for demonstrating basic working of TEMT6000 Ambient light sensor.Here we are  using Arduino Pro Mini as our microcontroller.You can use either a battery or FTDI+USB for powering the board.Anyway if we want to see the data on serial monitor we need to use FTDI and USB.In the below code i am just reading the data and printing it into percentage of Ambient light.And arduino inbuilt LED will ON if the analog value from the sensor goes beyond certain value.

CONNECTION

ARDUINO PRO MINI                  SENSOR

VCC                                               VCC

GND                                              GND

A0                                                   SIG

You can find  fritzing files here
you can find the hackster project here

Arduino Code

Purchase links
Sparkfun electronics 
Rhydolabz