Stamp-Based Light-Direction Sensing


Now being a proud Basic Stamp 2 owner, I thought I'd include the circuits I build with it on my site... The first Fully-Functionnal circuit I built with it was a circuit that blinks two LEDs according to the direction light comes onto its sensors... This circuit has no particular use, if not serving as a sensor for a mobile robot... I thought I'd include it anyways, for those of you who can find a use for it...

The following circuit was built on a solderless breadboard and it will read the resistance of the two CdS cells and compare them. Depending on which cell most of the light comes on, one LED will light accordingly. The sensors were placed on a separate breadboard to allow better positionning. the sensors were placed close together and separated with a cardboard sheet to eliminate unwanted light. the circuit is built as follows:

For those of you who would want to find an infrared source, you can replace the CdS cells with the following circuit, Q1 being and infrared phototransistor.

The LEDs were triangular-shaped, pointing in the direction the light was coming from.

Program listing:


rightres var word 'variables

leftres var word

main: HIGH 0 'make pins 0 and 1 HIGH to discharge capacitors

HIGH 1

PAUSE 1 'wait for capacitors to discharge

RCTIME 0,1,rightres 'get discharge time from both CdS cells

RCTIME 1,1,leftres

rightres=rightres/10 'divide by ten to eliminate excess precision

leftres=leftres/10

IF rightres>leftres THEN rightLED

IF leftres>rightres THEN leftLED

GOTO main 'loop

rightLED:

HIGH 15 'turn first LED on

PAUSE 100 'custom time...

LOW 15 'turn first LED off

PAUSE 100

RETURN 'go back to program

leftLED: 'same but with other LED

HIGH 14

PAUSE 100

LOW 14

PAUSE 100

RETURN 'go back to program



Martin-Luc Girard

tcumming@minet.ca