Lights, Camera, Action

Experiments with the Arduino platform

Today, in our Physical Computing class for the University of Colorado, Katie and I put together a fun hack with an Arduino, a photoresistor, and a set of LEDs. Our task was to build a circuit that had one input, one output, and an Arduino program to hook them together.

Katie had the idea of making a circuit that turned the lights on when it got dark. Concievably, a real-world application of this design would connect the lights of a house to a photoresistor that was placed outside—so that when the sun set the house lights would turn on.

Arduino Light Sensor Demonstration

I added that it might be cool if we had several lights, which lit up in a row depending on how dark it was. After about 15 minutes of tinkering, we got our setup working! Above you can observe the result.