Luminance IoT

The project gives the user the ability to check the luminance level with the help of a TSL2561 luminance sensor through a smartphone app. The total cost of this project is somewhere around $35 and the time required is 60 minutes most. The components that you will need for this purpose include a computer, router, network cable, USB cable, standard Arduino Shield or equivalent ethernet board, Arduino Uno, luminance sensor, single port female to female jumper wires, and single port male to male jumper wires.It is recommended to have a arduino baord with mini USB connector because the ethernet shield wouldn’t get insertedproperly if original arduino boards aren’t used.

For specifications of other components, you can check out these links: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/arduinoBoardUno or http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoEthernetShield. In terms of the luminance sensor, the pin needs to have vin between 3-5 V, GND- Ground, 3v – 5v, 12C signals Int SDA – A4, and SCL-A5. While wiring, you need to pin-out the connection using following pictures.

To run this system on your computer, you will need software components. One of the software will support the hardware running while the other one will work for the mobile app. The software will run only on Arduino development environment. You will have to get access to an external library that Arduino IDE doesn’t include on default mode. The best library you can go for is TSL2561, the only thing you need to be aware of is that there are two components that are to be downloaded. Carefully follow the instructions given on the website: https://learn.adafruit.com/tsl2561/downloads. Once you have the software, load it and configure it. There is a single value that needs to be changed in the code. The first one is the device_id and the other one is “auth”. The device id is a unique identity you need to create for your hardware to keep it different from other on the cloud. You can always use guidgenerator website in order to generate GUID.”auth” on the other hand is the authentication strint that is needed for basic authentification of http requents.