Arduino Photocell Test

 

I wanted to see how effective the cheap photocells from Radioshack are so I made a little setup with the Ardunio running a servo and reading back the analog readings from the different photocells as they are covered over.

Epic fail part one was thinking I could create a cute little pop bottle top that would act as the head for the photocell tester robot. After mounting the photocells (photoresistors) through the pop bottle top I soldered and shrink-wrapped the leads onto wires from a randomr VCR connector. Complete with two LEDs on top this little roboto head might have worked perfectly, if I haden't filled the cap with hot glue to keep everything in place. Hence, epic fail part one.

 

After establishing an overly elaborate connection on a bread board, instead of just trying out the photoresistors I decided to create the full servo-motor head effect and connected it through a second bread board to the Arduino. Fail number two.

So after all this, I hooked up the LCD display to show the raw data and a scaled value between 1-100. To my dismay the middle, small resistor was the only one that would show a change in value. Even in the dark with a bright flashlight directly on one of the larger phororesistors, no change was registered.

Final result: a very elaborate (and comlpetly useless) coca-cola pop bottle top servo-controled robot heat with mono-vision.