A light/dark sensing circuit is extremely useful and versatile in a wide range of renewable energy projects from automatic lighting to security systems. In our article Light Dependent Resistor we explained how an LDR can be used in simple circuits to control devices according to the ambient levels of lighting - for example, automatically turning o
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n a lamp above a doorway at nighttime. The circuits provided in that article were very basic and therefore not without their problems. The main problem is that the automatic turn-on is not sharp - i. e. rather than switching the lamp on fully as soon as ambient levels of light fall to a fixed point, the lamp turns on slowly getting brighter and brighter as light levels fall. This is not a serious problem when controlling a lamp - in fact it may even be desirable - however when controlling other devices (such as a night vision camera) it is not optimal. One way around this is to use a relay, however a typical 12 Volt relay draws 300-500mW of power - a significant waste of energy when a 1 Watt LED spotlight for example is to be controlled. 1st Nov 2007 Update - We have modified the schematic diagram above with the addition of a 220uF smoothing capacitor between the base of transistor Q1 and ground. Without this capacitor, the relay chatter (relay switching on and off many times per second) was terrible around the switch on/off light level. By adding the capacitor, relay chatter was completely eliminated. According to the designer of this circuit, the relay will be closed only when "NO light falls on LDR1", however, in testing this circuit proved to work very well with the user able to adjust the potentiometer (P1) to automatically close the relay at whatever light level they chose. By swapping the postitions of the 10K...
This project fits more for custom made battery casing that can have more space to hide things inside. This switch with few alterations can be used for any other project as well but is designed based on e-bike needs! This project use a clever functionality of....
The circuit described here uses ultrasonic oscillations and operates based on the propagation velocity of these oscillations in the air. Thus, we can easily determine the distance of two points if the time within which the wave travels this distance is....
Sometimes the precious metals are hidden too deep and are not detected except with complicated devices. In many cases, however, small pieces of precious metal buried near the surface can be detected by relatively simple means. Everyone is very attractive to....
Many times for various reasons we forget or can not water the plants that we have in our homes. And many humidity sensors units just notify us with a beeping sound or with a flashing light, that the pot needs watering. But what if we are away from home? This....
The principle behind a metal detector is really very simple. Proof of this is the circuit that follows, in which it proves that the construction of a metal detector can be done in the minute, with few components that we find very easily everywhere. With the....
The sub-harmonic bass generator is a sound producing unit for guitars. The sound it produces looks very much like that of the bass guitar. The octave generator is sometimes quite unusual since it does not produce any of the usual ways of coloring the sound,....
In the past the sounding (sea bottom measurement) was done with the "bullet", that is, with a heavy lead object that the seamen plucked into the sea hung from a calibrated rope. As soon as the "bullet" reached the bottom, the depth appeared directly from the....
This Amplifier was designed to have the following specifications: Distortion less than 0.1% at full power of 100W even at 20KHz. Power has to be attributed to an extended bandwidth. The output transistors must be protected against short circuits. The power....
A series of LEDs serve to alert the gardener when plants need water. Using two conventional digital integrated LEDs and a series of LEDs, we make a very useful device for gardening. The device detects the amount of water in the pot and alerts the grower.....
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