Sunday, December 8, 2024

Automatic Ambient Light System With IoT Home Automation

Wouldn’t it be amazing if our room light automatically adjusts its brightness according to our needs? Or if we can control the brightness of LED lights from our phone? This would not only make our life more comfortable, but it will also help us save a lot of energy.

All this can be made possible by using PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) controller. This controller has three steps for calculation Kp, Ki, Kd.

  • Kp:- Here p stands for proportional and the output value is directly
    proportional to the error value. If the error is high, the controlled output
    is also high, and it deals with the present value of error.
  • Ki:- Here i stands for the integral control. It eliminates the error using
    integration till it gets the desired value.
  • Kd:- Here d stands for derivative control. This d controller is responsible
    to predict the future error based on current change over time.

The PID controller controls light brightness in the following steps.

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  1. PID controller first reads the value from the light sensor
  2. Then it calculates the error from the present value of sensor to the
    desired set point for brightness
  3. After the calculation, the PID gives its output to LED and brightness to
    meet the desired set point

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What we are going to make?

In this project we are going to make an IOT Home automation system with PID
controller light. Our IOT system have the following features:

  • App controlled light brightness
  • RGB colour controller using app
  • An adaptive brightness system
  • Time based Automatic light/Fan controller.

Materials Required

  • 1 RGB LED
  • 1 LDR
  • 110 OHM Resistor
  • 1 Arduino UNO
  •  Bluetooth HC O5
  •  1 Led
  •  Relay Module

Coding

We have installed the ‘PID_V1’ library to Arduino IDE. After this we can start
our coding.
In the first part of our code, we will create a few variables to store the different
values required for our project. After that we will initialize the ‘PID_V1’ and
‘SoftwereSerial’ library to code (Refer Fig 1).
Next, we will create a setup function where we set the pinmodes for I/O pins
and the baudrate for Bluetooth HC 05. Here in this code, we have used
baudrate of 9600 but you can use different baudrate according to your
Bluetooth module setting. (Refer Fig 2).

Fig 1. Arduino Code
Fig 2. Setting pinmodes

Next a loop function is created where we take the inputs from the app and
store in a variable named ‘serial’. After that several if conditions are created
for controlling the LED light brightness, fan and RGB led colour. After that we
will build a ‘while loop’ that checks the analog value to set the led light in
adaptive brightness mode. If this while loop reads the value less than 50 then it
goes in adaptive brightness.

Fig 3. Arduino code for PID controller.

App Making

In our project we have systems that control RGB light colour, room light
brightness, automatic and manual mode adaptive light as well as date and
time-controlled light. And we are going to give these features using an android
app.

Here we are going to use kodular app builder for making app (you can also use
MIT app inventor). In kodular app builder, we will create a layout for app and
add the following components to layout:

  • 1 List picker
  •  4 buttons
  •  3 Text Boxes
  •  2 Clock Timer
  •  1 Bluetooth client
  •  4 slider bar
Fig 4. App Layout

After creating the app layout and adding the above components, go to the
code blocks and join the code blocks as shown in Fig 5.
You can download the source code and app from the link below.

Download Code 

Fig 5. Code Blocks

Connection

Arduino UNO Components
Pin 7 Bluetooth TX
Pin 8 Bluetooth Rx
GND Bluetooth GND
5V Bluetooth VCC
3V RGB LED Common Cathode
Pin 5 RGB Led R pin
Pin 6 RGB Led G Pin
Pin 11 RGB Led B pin
Pin 3 LED Light
Pin A0 Light Sensor LDR Pin
Pin A3 Switch Pin
Fig 6. Circuit Diagram.

Testing

First power the components and relay, then open the app we have created.
Now, test each feature of app one by one. First tap on connect button on app
and select the Bluetooth HC 05. After the successful connection you can
control the brightness of LED light of app by moving first slider bar. Move the
slider bar and set the brightness of light as per your need.

Fig 7. Slider bar for LED and RGB control

You can also turn lights off/on using the lights off /on buttons in the app. If you
want to change the RGB mood light colour, use the 3 rd , 4 th , 5 th slider bars to
choose your desired colour. To make your room lights turn off automatically
while you are on a vacation or office, set the date and time in text box on the
left side. The app will automatically turn the lights off on the set time and date.

Fig 8. Date setting for auto turn off light

Now let’s test the main function of the project i.e. PID adaptive brightness
system. Turn on the auto button in the device. This will make the device go
into auto brightness mode and the LED will automatically change its brightness
according to the set value in PID controller code.
Note:- You can change the Kp, Ki, Kd values in code by hit and trial method to
get more accurate and best adaptive brightness.

Ashwini Sinha
Ashwini Sinha
A tech journalist at EFY, with hands-on expertise in electronics DIY. He has an extraordinary passion for AI, IoT, and electronics. Holder of two design records and two times winner of US-China Makers Award.

10 COMMENTS

  1. Everything is OK but I didn’t understand that why u didn’t use LDR and resistor in video you have uploaded but you have used it in circuit diagram.
    Iam in a confusion whether to use them or not in my project. Plz help me.

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