Dear friends welcome to the Arduino Light Meter Tutorial! Today we are going to learn how to build our own project to measure the intensity of the light in an environment. We are going to use an Arduino, the BH1750 sensor, and a Nokia 5110 display. There is a lot to cover so let’s get started!

Intro to the Arduino Light Meter Tutorial

Today we build a quite sensitive and accurate light meter. We are going to use the BH1750 sensor with outputs illuminance in the Lux SI unit. As you can see in the display we can see live data of the illuminance right here under the LED light. If I put my finger on the sensor you can see the illuminance drops and when I remove it goes back to about 2000 150 lux. That’s the performance indoors under the LED light. Let’s go outside and see its performance in direct sunlight. We are outside now. It is a wonderful day in Greece today. So let’s see the reading of our light sensor in direct sunlight. It’s a bit overcast and it is in the morning. Fifty thousand lux.

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WHERE TO BUY
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1. Arduino Uno: https://educ8s.tv/part/ArduinoUno

2. BH1750: https://educ8s.tv/part/BH1750

3. Nokia 5110 LCD: https://educ8s.tv/part/NOKIA5110

4. Small Breadboard: https://educ8s.tv/part/SmallBreadboard

5. Wires: https://educ8s.tv/part/Wires

Full disclosure: All of the links above are affiliate links. I get a small percentage of each sale they generate. Thank you for your support!

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In order to build this light meter, we are going to need: A BH1750 that costs under 2 euros on eBay. A Nokia 5110 LCD display which costs around 2.5 euros and of course an Arduino. We’re going to use an Arduino Uno today which cost around 4 euros. So the total cost of this project is around 8.5 Euros. As you can my soldering skills are terrible but it works so I will practice on that. Let’s connect the sensor to Arduino. The first pin is Vcc, Vcc goes to Arduino 5V. The second pin is ground. Ground goes to Arduino Ground. The third pin is SCL, SCL goes to analog pin 5 of Arduino Uno. The fourth pin is SDA, SDA goes to analog pin 4 of Arduino. The fifth pin is named address but we won’t use it. Next, we have to connect a Nokia 5110 LCD display. Check out the tutorial we have prepared on how to connect a Nokia 5110 LCD display. OK, we’re ready. Let’s power it on and see if it is working.OK, the splash screen is displayed and now the illuminance is displayed as well. If I put my finger on the illuminance drops.

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LIBRARIES
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1. BH1750 library: https://github.com/claws/BH1750

2. Nokia 5110 library: http://www.rinkydinkelectronics.com/library.php?id=47

Now let’s go to the computer and see the software side of the project. In order to use the light sensor, we have to use the BH1750 library from claws. All we have to do is to download the library and unzip it in the Arduino -> libraries folder. We unzip it and rename it. Now we are ready to use it. We are going to need of course the Nokia 5110 LCD display. You can find links for the libraries in the description of the video. Next, all you have to do is to load the project’s code. It consists of three files. The main code, this file here and two files that contain the data for the splash screen and the UI for the light meter. Those files here. We have prepared a tutorial on how to create and load graphics on the Nokia 5110 display. You can find the link for the code of the project in the description of the video. As you can see the code is very simple and you can change it to satisfy your own needs. That’s today’s project a low-cost but accurate light meter. It is a quite useful functionality that we can use in future projects. We can replace the inaccurate photoresistor with this sensor as the cost is low and the connection is really easy.

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CODE
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Download

 

 

 

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