Timely recording for me. I was trying to get UV readings with a VEML6075. Reads nicely but discovered it is very directional. I'd need a solar tracker for it to measure solar UV consistently.
I want to thank you for your work. You've been so helpful, every time I want to buy a new sensor for a project there's a video of you trying the most common available and making a thoroughly made review about it. So, thank you you've made much lighter the work otherwise I've had to make in order to choose the right sensor for my project
Thanks for dedicating your time to another great video! :) Right now we are developing a project that needs a light sensor and after a close examination we've went fo the same IC TCS34725.
Thanks again for a great video. I specially enjoy these compilation videos which compare similar devices and helps us followers save a lot of time searching for the info you kindly bring us in the usual well structured and easy to follow videos
This video arrived in the perfect time for me, today I was researching the detection of gamma and beta radiation using photodiodes as a replacement for Geiger-Müller tubes, so this video was very handy! Congrats for the 200k! :D
hi Andreas i like those videos when you talk about different sensors and compare them keep up the good work , i think your channel will become the reference in sensors boards for arduino and MCUs
superb explanation of content and inclusion of initial targets and end results for complete understanding! God bless you this video came as ray of hope for my works!!
Well that video brightened a dull day (sorry). Learnt a lot - never realised the sensors where so different. I’ll be following up the gesture sensor, thank you for publishing your code for that. One thing to note - a significant amount of ‘white’ paper is actually blue to give a clean cold look rather than a warm tint.
You are right for teh paper (AFAIK not in all countries equally). But here I measured the spectrum of the diodes without paper. So both effects would add up :-(
Hi Andreas, video with lot of tehnical details and extensive comparison of different sensor available on the market. I feel bad that I did not find your video for this long time.. Once again Thank you so much.. I see a German accent in your explanation. Danke schön.
In my current project I am designing a sensor for determining distance with a red 5mW laser diode. I would like to be able to use these readings to control the response of a small dc stepper motor for controlling an X/Y axis small milling table. I have a lot to learn and I am sure this information will set me in the right direction. I started thinking about this project only earlier today, so this video came out with perfect timing for my needs. Thank You for all of your help over the past few years that I have been developing my understanding of these concepts.
Very glad to have found this channel and this video. Would like to have seen more info on UV sensors, particularly for a weather station to detect the UV level outdoors.
@@AndreasSpiess your method (I use a similar one) allows us to demonstrate to our peers and students that's to "err" is not just natural but part of a healthy learning process. By brushing our mistakes under the carpet or worse, denying them, we create an atmosphere of mistrust and fear that only hampers learning. Honestly Andreas, I wish there were more RU-vid instructors (and teachers in general) like you out there. Humanity would be far less self-destructive if there were.
Thank you for another interesting video in a series that will hopefully be continued 👍 At last no sensor or web based service can replace the wifes skills and predictions 😁
Frohe Ostern, Andreas und vielen Dank für die tollen Videos. Ich freue mich, dass du die 200.000 Abonnenten erreicht hast - ein großartiger Meilenstein: Gratulation! Bleib gesund in dieser schwierigen Zeit! Vielleicht brauchen wir jetzt eine Definition von dBs(ubscriber), dann wünsche ich alsbald +3dBs ;)
Very interesting video, many of these devices I have never used. Things have certainly come a long way since the OCP71 (or OC71 with the paint scratched off!). I have a WEMOS which monitors the temperature and humidity in my loft, I think I will add a light sensor to warn if the loft lights are left on when the hatch is closed. Bob
Hello Andreas, I have worked for TAOs since long before we were purchased by AMS. You are correct the TCS3200 is outdated. Also the TCS3414 as well. Neither of these have IR filters because when they were designed the technology to deposit the filter directly on the chip was new and very expensive. You are right the TCS34725 is the only AMS part you had that is not obsolete. BTW the Avago part is really an AMS part. TCS3223 I believe. AMS now has a TIme of Flight device you should try. This is very interesting part. Oh, and that TSL2561 was used as the Ambient Light Sensor by Apple in the very first iPhone. Those have a very wide dynamic range because you have an analog gain setting and you can also set the integration time from 2.7ms all the way up to 65535 x 2.7ms. Great video! DE N5BOC
Thankl oyu for the info. I still struggle with both sensors out in the sunlight. As far as I see TCS34725 is saturated and the TSL 2561 sometimes provides strange values. I have to investigate further and also ordered some ND filters to reduce the light energy.
Danke für das wieder sehr informative Video, Andreas es sind die Sätze wie, meine Frau machte Witze über meine Fähigkeiten die mich jedes mal schmunzeln lassen und ich sozusagen eine tiefe Verbundenheit verspüre, mir geht es ja genauso. Oder so Sätze wie in deinem LoRaWAN Video als es darum ging die Pins vom Draginoboard einzutragen "Otherwise you scratch your head an nothing goes" (Video 117) soooooo genial :-) Hey schöne Ostern und bleibt gesund!
Ich bin leider etwas spät für Osterwünsche. Danke! Ja, auf diesem Kanal sind viele ähnlich Interessierte Leute anzutreffen. Ich finde das sehr schön. RU-vid sei dank können wir uns so finden und etwas vernünftiges unternehmen...
You know the wife is paying attention when she starts mocking your engineering choices. :D Thanks for the comparison -- I hadn't even heard of half of these. Time for another shopping round...
Thank you for your effort and time spent on this Topic. Regarding your awning: What also could be helpful for you is the cloudage. I am measuring far IR Temp with a Melexis MLX90614 and environmental Temp with an BM280 or SHT35 (you would prefere the Swiss one). Then I calculate (or rather more guess) the cloudage.
@@AndreasSpiess him gokd sir...i, too was thinking about suggesting an IR sensor, as the luxmeter will not 'see' the IR that is heating your home...still, if it sees overall brightness, it would give a 'useful' correlation to insolation...
@@AndreasSpiess I'd love to spend a week with you in your lab. Trying to learn all this stuff is hard. I'm a great grunt worker .... I sweep a mean floor
Thanks for the video. I've been using the GY-49 / MAX44009 module for measuring lux in my greenhouse (to calculate the total moles of light the plants receive). It claims to have a range up to 188,000 lux.
Hi Andreas, thanks for another great video. I just want to mention that LEDs can also be used as light sensor for some applications. I am using an array of 3 LEDs for an ultra low cost 3-channel spectrometer.
An LED will also work as an ambient light detection sensor. First used IIRC by HP in calculators, measuring the voltage of 7-segment displays where the LED segment was off, to determine the current to drive the display segments, according to ambient light. So you wouldn't suffer retinal damage in the lab from a display readable in outdoor daylight.
I worked in lighting for 10 years. The best light sensor in lux, in my humble opinion, is the Texas Instrument OPT3001. I scanned across the entire visible spectrum, from 380nm to 780nm in 20nm steps, and the sensor actually fits almost perfectly the CIE-defined eye sensitivity curve. It is the best light sensor I could measure. In addition to adjusting to the sensitivity of the human eye, it can measure from 0.1 lux to 100,000 lux. This dynamic range of measurement is amazing.
Andreas thank you for your vídeo. Excelent. I used APDS 9960 for a project wich needs to get light colour temperature (Kelvin) it is an excelent sensor.
@andreas If you use a lux sensor for your awning you'll need to keep adjusting it every winter for when you want to sit out in the sun. It might be better to use a temperature sensor instead. Or maybe mix both (lux and temperature) and make some Node-RED flow for it! Sounds like a project! 😉
@@AndreasSpiess yes you are right, I checked my setup (weather station) again and it's an SI1145 which I use outdoor. I use the TEMT6000 as indoor sensor
Happy Easter, Andreas! Great video! I wonder wether one of the proximity sensors would be accurate enough to use in a 3D printer for auto bed leveling?
Grüezi from Zurich! I have a project currently based heavily on home sensors for monitoring house plants. Light is obviously an important variable to monitor so have been prototyping with lots of different breakout boards. Currently developing the design on a PCB and I've found that a lot of the lux sensors are hard to source when building yourself. Currently, I'm working with the BH1715 (poor results), VEML6030 (excellent I2C), and the TEMT6000 (analog, quite primitive). Would love to experiment with the UV as this is also an important aspect of plant health so will try to integrate a few extra sensors into the next version!
@@AndreasSpiess So much, always. Just finished up the design this weekend and have the VEML6075 UV sensor onboard :D. Once i'm at a point where it's worth seeing, I'll send you one for your mailbag!
For proximity and lux sensors there also is the SI114X series. I'm waiting for an SI1145 which can even approximate the UV Index by combining the IR and Visible Light sensors. Frohe Ostern
Hi Andreas, great content as usual and very helpful for a project I have always wanted to try: I would like to read the outside color temperature using one of my arduinos, then integrate it via mqtt into my node-red to adapt the Philips Hue Lights in a room with a tiny window to the same color temperature (doing this manually gives a much better perceived light atmosphere, but with changing lights outside (cloudy->sunny->cloudy) this is also irritating). Maybe some expert here has an idea: would it be sufficient to convert RGB values to Kelvin for that matter or would I need other values to analyze light intensity? Congratulatitons on 200k! :)
Interesting project. Color management is not an easy thing because always the whole spectrum is important.. Hopefully you find an expert for that matter
If someone really wants to measure the human perceived color values, better use a tri-stimulus sensor in the XYZ colorspace. They are also made by AMS, an Austrian company. There is also an option for sensing 18 channels in parallel with 20nm bandwith for each channel.
Clear 10mm LED, two digital pins = very good detection of sunlight levels. In a nutshell, the LED is capacitively charged by feeding a reverse voltage into it (pins set to OUTPUT), then the decay of that voltage is measured as it slowly leaks into the (now) INPUT pins of the MCU. The more light there is, the faster it discharges. I've used it successfully for quite a few projects, no ADC needed.
@@marcelachternaam9249 Search for "LED as light sensor". The sparkfun article explains how it works, the instructable article shows a sketch, the stackoverflow describes the principle, pasting the text here: Set Port A output high set Port B output low // this makes sure the led is discharged wait 1mS set Port A output low set Port B output high // reverse bias and charge wait 1mS set Port B as input // Port B is high impedance input time how long for Port B to read low
I use the same sensor on a GY-49.breakout board. However every Arduino library for the MAX44009 I downloaded had the same mistake in reading lux levels correctly. Looks like everyone copied the same error from the original library 😁 It's an excellent lux level sensor with a huge 22 bit dynamic range, ultra low current and IR/UV blocking filters.
here is the code I use, is it okay ? #define DATA_LUX_HIGH 0x03 #define DATA_LUX_LOW 0x04 float MAX44009::getLux(void) { int luxHigh = readI2CAddr(DATA_LUX_HIGH); int luxLow = readI2CAddr(DATA_LUX_LOW); int exponent = ( luxHigh & 0xf0 ) >>4; int mant = ( luxHigh & 0x0f )
// Request 2 bytes of data Wire.requestFrom(0x4A, 1); // Read 2 bytes of data luminance msb, luminance lsb if (Wire.available() == 1) { data[1] = Wire.read(); } // Convert the data to lux int exponent = (data[0] & 0xF0) >> 4; int mantissa = ((data[0] & 0x0F)
Hi Andreas, can you recommend a material, or maybe a ready product for outdoor UV sensor housing? AFAIK even regular glass blocks some of UV radiation. So just gluing together some glass may not be the best idea. Or could just measure the decrease of measured values behind the cover, and try to compensate for that?
Even glas blocks some UV the readings still should be ok if the attenuation is constant. I have no calibrated UV meter, so calibration will anyway not be possible for teh moment.
Hi Andreas, nice video like always. I have a question for you :) On the ESP32, if someone creates a wifi Network with the same SSID and the ESP32 tries to connect to it, the password that it sends to the router is Encripted? Or the fake Router can know your password in plain text with this kind of attack? Thank you for your amazing videos. Thx from Spain ;)
This has nothing to do with ESP32. This is a Wi-Fi security question. ESP32 uses the same technology as your Smarphone etc. So it should be save if your your router setup is ok
The current network encryption (wpa2) is still holding strong and works with your shared network key. If your esp want acess to the network through the access point is requests a random number as a challange and then the esp computes a couple of computaions where the random number the network key and his own mac adress is needed. The esp will send his encrypted random number back to the access point for evaluation and voila if the key was right you are in. Be carful in reality its even more complicated with more numbers and a 4way handshake but you get the point.
average WiFi network is probably more susceptible to bruteforce attacks since people don't bother with long shared keys with enough entropy. Not sure about preventative mechanisms in common standards, though.
I recently use VEML6030/VEML7700 ALS sensor with perfect human eye response. Also have a look about VEML6040 RGB sensor. All from Vishay. Nice packaging, but a little bad interface
There has to be this intuitive bond. I am currently working on a project in which I measure the UV-A and UV-B radiation, and if the brightness is exceeded, the shutters on the windows are to be automatically shut down until the UV-A and UV-B levels are again a comfortable level in the room reached. 🤗😘 In my Project I desire to use GY-6075 Light Sensor Modul and BMP280 for Weather Control with a Node MCU ESP32 Dev Board and a 433 MHz RF Transmitter to control the Somfy Window automation.
At 10:19 you're talking about the TSL2591 as not recommended, but the red box on the left doesn't include that sensor. Looking at the AMS website, it actually says "Industry leading dynamic range which drives both ultra low light sensitivity and bright sunlight operation" about that sensor.
Hi Andreas, I want to use the RGB sensor to detect the color of the water in a transparent tube, will it work? My idea is to read the PH/Alkalinity level of water of water test kit. If it works, which is the best RGB sensor choice?
You can get filters for most wavelengths which is handy in some projects to filter out other types of light you are not interested in measuring and which can interfere with your results.
Greetings Andreas, I am working on a personal research project but because of quarantine I can not buy any precision light measuring sensors and had to use the LDR that I already had at hand, but due to LDR's extreme variance with the change in temperature, it is far from precise, stuck at home and cannot buy anything, so I had to come up with an alternative, so I am using LEDs as a light sensor, I have tested many LEDs and came to a conclusion that the LEDs which light up at least voltage give the best results. I kindly propose the idea for one of your future videos to analyze and show how feasible it is to use an LED as a light sensor. Regards, Tanishq
Tanishq - maybe you are interested in this project - a solar tracker that uses LEDs as the sensor - he has lots of info on his webpage www.redrok.com/led3xassm.htm#led3xc3
Have you considered putting sensors in solar garden lights? You get a solar panel, a battery and an enclosure for a relatively cheap price. For instance temperature and moisture measurements in the greenhouse. You probably need a buck-converter to get the 3.3v needed from a 1.2NiCd or 3.2LiOn, but still. If the ESP went into deep sleep, and only sends occasionally, I guess most lamps could supply the power.
Good idea. I started to build a combination of a Lux, an UV, and an RGB sensor. In addition it communicates via 2.4GHz LoRa. The MPU is an Arduino Mini which Igels it’s Takt from an RTC Module. Still a lot of LEDs, so I do not know the current consumption. But it needs some space.
Your awning is to stop it getting too hot. Think infra red. A heat sink with a temp sensor might be easier and more effective! Depends if you want an engineers or a geeks solution!! Your sensor comparisons are really useful. Stay well.
